


Ustilago Maydis

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anderson gets what he deserves, Case-related endangerment to a spider, Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Idk though I might keep it g we’ll see where it goes, Kid Fic, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Molds and mushrooms, Never Have I Ever, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Rating May Change, VERY nontradional, Weddings, also everything is strictly explicitly consensual, cases, doesnt ignore differing sexualities, dont read this fic if you’re in any way grossed out by mold, fungus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2019-10-28 23:16:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 29,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17796620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: See, if it was just him and Sherlock living together, then John could explain that it was the perfectly normal, decent-person thing to do, throwing out moldy food he found in the fridge. And he would be the sane one and Sherlock would be the unreasonable mad one for getting pissed.But no. John lives with two Holmeses, and right now both of them are giving him death glares for unwittingly binning Ivy’s latest fungal experiment.





	1. First Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I'm dealing with a lot of personal shit and also working on a big project right now, so fanfiction is definitely taking a backseat. You can consider all of my fics to be on de facto hiatus unless I'm feeling particularly inspired for one of them at some point. Sorry.

“Sherlock, you can’t bring your kid in here.”

“Yes I can. This is not a crime scene, and there are no rules prohibiting children from Scotland Yard’s _offices.”_

Lestrade sighed. “It’s not appropriate.”

Ivy bristled. “You’re just talking about the case, though. What if I want to be a detective when I grow up? Shouldn’t I learn how to detect? And you’re the very best, Uncle Greg. Please?”

Donovan pursed her lips in disapproval, looking first at Sherlock, then very pointedly at Lestrade. He rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Fine,” he said.

“What?” Donovan squawked. “This is hardly appropriate—”

“I will decide what is and is not appropriate for my child to be exposed to, Sally, though I do appreciate your concern. Now. Let’s talk about drug smuggling.”

Sherlock took a seat across from Lestrade’s desk, sprawling out in the chair as if he owned the entire office. Ivy followed suit, stealing the other chair and unsubtly mimicking her father’s posture.

“We know the drugs are being routed in and dealt in SubZero. The owner, Ralph Simon, has all his finances completely above-board, but it just doesn’t add up. There are no mysterious deposits or withdrawals and all his books show that the club is just doing modestly well.”

“But he has a penthouse in central London, three estates in the country, and a superyacht. Not to mention some of his other valuable assets, priceless art and the like. Absolutely no financial record of how he paid for any of it, but the vendors reported receiving payment nonetheless. Thus, the obvious conclusion…” Sherlock trailed off.

“Ooh! I know!” Ivy said. “He has other bank accounts! Secret ones, in places that don’t tell our government about stuff like that. Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. I think.”

Sherlock nodded. “Very good,” he said. “Yes. Simon has discreet offshore bank accounts that handle massive transactions. It follows, then, that they also contain massive amounts of cash. It could be that he acquired these accounts purely for the purposes of income tax evasion, but the more likely scenario is that he has something to hide. After all,” he grinned, “where is all this money coming from?”

“We can’t just arrest him,” Donovan said. “Us police have this funny thing about requiring proof and all that. And just being rich isn’t a crime. Unfortunately.” She sneered in Sherlock’s general direction.

“He has to be caught red-handed,” Sherlock said. “The drugs are physically sold to a variety of London’s dealers from within SubZero, I assure you. Simon is a supplier. He won’t get his hands dirty with the back alley business of actually dealing. No, that’s for criminals lower down on the food chain to do.”

“If we could get a warrant to search the place—” Lestrade started.

“It won’t do you any good. The main stash will be in a secure location off-site. Simon will have just enough at the club to put away some of his employees who would take the fall for a mere few years at best. No, we need to cut the problem off at the source.”

“We should be working on finding this ‘secure location’ of yours. The club sounds like red herring more than anything. We arrest one of Simon’s small-time dealers, he’ll just find another to take his place,” Donovan said. “So what are we looking for? A storage container? Secret room in the bottom of his yacht?”

Sherlock huffed. “Don’t be dull. He won’t keep the drugs on a property he actually owns. No. That’s his second in command’s job, isn’t it? _That’s_ why we’re working the club angle. We need to get in close enough to find out the ring’s hierarchy.”

“And how do you propose we do that, then?” Lestrade asked. “Get a job tending the bar and casually ask who the boss’s best mate is?”

“No. I propose we get jobs as drug dealers.”

“Oh, hell no,” Lestrade said, then shot a guilty glance at Ivy. “Sorry. Sherlock, with your history—”

“I’m perfectly capable of working a simple drugs case without getting emotionally affected, Lestrade. Do try to remember that I am a sociopath.”

“Even if I did ignore that load of bull— _rubbish,_ sorry, that is not at all how triggers work—”

“Am I a mindless beast to you, completely incapable of self-control or restraint in the slightest?”

“No, but you are an addict,” he said. “Sorry, Sherlock. But I won’t allow this. Either come up with a different plan or you’re off this case.”

* * *

“So what do we do now?” Ivy asked, hurrying to keep up with her father’s long strides.

“We’re going to St. Bart’s,” he said. “There are five bodies currently in the morgue suspected to have been killed by heroine overdose. It’s a long shot, but one or more of them may hold some clues. At the very least, we can pass the time experimenting.”

Ivy preened, slipping her hand into her dad’s, her steps getting a slight skip to them.

* * *

“Ivy!” Molly cried, smiling. “Sherlock! So nice to see you. You want into the labs again, right?”

Ivy nodded enthusiastically. Molly appeared to melt even further, and dug her keys out of her lab coat.

She showed them along to the morgue, unlocking the body boxes Sherlock requested to be shown and the cupboards full of equipment they would be using. Molly rattled off a quick run-down of each of the bodies, and Sherlock followed it up with his own careful examination. Molly left him to it, going to help Ivy with project with the centrifuge. She had been using to untraditional materials to attempt to create new forms of watercolor paint for the past week and a half.

They had been working in companionable silence, only speaking occasionally and with Sherlock on the opposite side of the lab, when Ivy spoke up.

“You fancy my dad,” she said.

Molly startled, then froze, paling.

“Don’t bother denying it. It’s perfectly obvious,” she continued. “And I’m alright with it. You should ask him out.”

“Wh—” Molly shook her head. “Ivy… I—We’re both omegas.”

“So?”

“Well. Usually omegas don’t go out with each other. They tend to prefer alphas, or even betas. Your father—I’m afraid I’m not his type, love.” She smiled, a bit sadly. “Besides. Don’t you want to have another alpha parent again?”

“You’re stupid,” Ivy said. “Father said you weren’t. He’s not usually wrong.”

“What?”

“You’re stupid,” she repeated. “My other dad was an omega too.”

Molly’s eyes widened and moved instantly out across the lab, seeking out Sherlock as if of their own accord. He was hunched over a microscope, completely oblivious.

“You should ask him out,” Ivy said decisively. She plucked a test tube out of the centrifuge and held it up to the light, swirling the fluid around gently.

* * *

Within twenty-four hours, Simon’s brother had come to light as a serious suspect for the ever-elusive right-hand man, and Lestrade’s team had found three bodies mysteriously dead just hours after returning from a cocktail party at the brother’s mansion. There was something suspicious about it, however, aside from the obvious poisoning that had occurred. Something about the way the house was cleaned. Neat, certainly, but not pristine. The cleaners were lazy. Cut corners. Must be cheap.

No self-respecting members of that strata of society would hire cheap house cleaners. Furthermore, usually even the worst cleaners were, at the least, good at cleaning. It was not a job typically undertaken if one completely lacked skill.

They didn’t have cleaners, then.

The thought struck Sherlock like a lightning bolt. Ralph Simon’s brother did not have a hired house cleaner. And just like that, the entire case fell into place in his mind. The overdoses, the poisonings, how the drugs were being smuggled in and dealt… He whipped out his phone and sent off a string of rapid-fire texts.

Mike was here. Mike was saying something.

“You two still living on Montague Street, then?”

“Hm.”

“Crap place, that. You thought about moving? For Ivy’s sake, of course.”

“Can’t afford to,” he said. Still texting. Lestrade was questioning his methods. “I’m an ex-addict with a variable income, as well as being a single parent. Very few people willing to rent to me. Plus, people tend to take issue with all the experiments.”

“Well, once you start releasing noxious fumes, you become a hazard to the neighbors, you know?” Mike said, chuckling good-naturedly. “What about former clients, though? Surely one of them would rent to you? You had to have made someone feel grateful at some point.”

“Even with the tolerance for eccentricities of a former client, there is still the matter of rent. I’ve looked into it, Mike, believe. Moving simply isn’t an option unless I should get a flatshare.” He smiled grimly. “And who’d want me for a flatmate?”

* * *

“So. Bad day, was it?” Molly asked, chuckling nervously.

Sherlock elected to ignore that, quite graciously, in his mind. “I need to know what bruises form in the next twenty minutes. A man’s alibi depends on it. Text me.”

Sherlock and Molly text occasionally. It’s… fun. And very informative.

But she was being weird right now.

“Listen, I was wondering, maybe later, when you’re finished—”

He glanced at her and then did a double-take. “You’re wearing lipstick. You weren’t wearing lipstick before.”

Overly attentive self-grooming, implies she’s trying to impress. Lipstick specifically has its own connotations, but there are no alphas in the vicinity, Sherlock would know. Molly hasn’t mentioned meeting anyone. Perhaps a new doctor…?

“I, uh… I refreshed it a bit.”

“Sorry, you were saying?”

“I was wondering if you’d like to have coffee.”

“Black, two sugars, please. I’ll be upstairs.”

“…Okay.”

Again, Molly was being weird.

* * *

Mike and someone else walked into the lab. Alpha, male, blond, unbonded, 5’6”, limp (cause?)—“Bit different from my day”—doctor.

New doctor. Not unattractive.

Molly’s man.

Sherlock would normally completely ignore him, on the pure basis of him being entirely useless and irrelevant to Sherlock’s purposes. But if Molly was interested in him, then he required investigating. It was important that Molly have a worthy and suitable alpha.

Not that Sherlock cared, on a personal level. His interest was purely professional. Dr. Molly Hooper being happy and content with her domestic life would lead to a greater ability to focus and an inclination towards generosity. Very important for Sherlock’s work.

“Afghanistan or Iraq?” he asked.

“Afghanistan. How did you—”

“Ah, Molly, coffee, thank you,” he said. “What happened to the lipstick?”

“It wasn’t working for me.”

“Really?” he asked. He had thought it was. He would have said if he didn’t. “I thought it was a big improvement. Your mouth’s too small now.”

“…Okay.”

So weird.

* * *

“We’ve only just met and we’re going to go look at a flat?”

“Problem?”

“We don’t know a thing about each other. I don’t know where we’re meeting, I don’t even know your name.”

“I know you’re an army doctor. I know you’ve been invalided home from Afghanistan. I know you’ve got a brother who’s worried about you, but you won’t go to him for help ‘cause you don’t approve of him, possibly because he’s an alcoholic, but more likely because he recently walked out on his wife. And I know your therapist thinks your limp’s psychosomatic, quite correctly, I’m afraid. That’s enough to be going on with, don’t you think?”

“An alpha and an omega, both of us unbonded, and we’re just going to live together? How exactly do you think that’s going to work out?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “I suppress my heats. It won’t be a problem,” he said. “Unless you don’t think you can keep your hands to yourself?”

“I’ll be fine, ta. It’s you I’m worried about.”

“Well don’t be. I assure you, I have no interest in being _bred.”_ He spat the word like a curse. “Now, if that will be all? The name’s Sherlock Holmes and the address is 221B.”

He whirled out of the morgue, coat swirling around him.


	2. Assistant

Sherlock stepped out of the cab in front of 221B with a little girl following close behind. John was already there, waiting on the step.

He smiled at the girl. “Hello there,” he said. “And who are you?”

“Ivy Minerva Holmes,” she said proudly, an imperious tilt to her chin.

John instantly fell in love.

“Oh! So you must be—Your father didn’t mention…” He looked to Sherlock helplessly. “You didn’t tell me you had a daughter.”

Sherlock frowned. “Would that have affected your decision to lease the flat?”

He sputtered. “Well—no. But it might have for some people. And it’s kind of an important detail.” He realized this conversation was edging into dangerous territory and glanced up at the building. “Well. This is a prime spot. Must be expensive.”

“Oh, Mrs. Hudson—the landlady—she’s giving me a special deal. Owes me a favor. Few years back, her alpha got himself sentenced to death in Florida. I was able to help out.”

“Sorry, you stopped her alpha being executed?”

“Oh no, I ensured it.” He grinned.

The door was opened by a kindly old woman who Sherlock immediately moved to hug, exchanging greetings and making introductions. Mrs. Hudson showed them in and Sherlock dashed up the stairs, leaving John to lag behind and Ivy dawdling with him.

“So, Florida, huh?” he said. “Did you have any fun while you were there? Get to go to Disney World?”

“What’s Disney World?” she asked.

“A—a place for kids. To go and have fun. You know about the Disney movies, right?”

“Dad took me to see the wetlands and mangrove forests. It was fascinating. I saw an alligator! And there was so much tillandsia usneoides. It was _everywhere!”_

“Tilla what now?” John asked, laughing.

“Tillandsia usneoides. Spanish moss. Don’t you know that? Dad said you were a doctor.”

“Ah, not that type of doctor, I’m afraid. I’m just a regular old GP. Not a biologist.”

“Oh,” she said. “I’m going to be a doctor when I grow up.”

“Really now? Of what?”

“Mycology.”

John had just enough time to be embarrassed that he had never even heard of mycology by the time they reached the top of the stairs.

He stepped into the flat. “Well, this could be very nice,” he said. “Very nice indeed.”

“My thoughts precisely,” Sherlock said.

“Soon as we get all this rubbish cleaned out.”

“So I went straight ahead and moved in.”

They both froze.

Ivy snorted, covering her mouth quickly.

* * *

Lestrade came bounding up the stairs without knocking or waiting to be admitted. He never did, not with Sherlock. It was repayment for Sherlock’s frequent break-ins to his flat, often at the most inopportune of times.

He had yet to catch Sherlock in any illicit acts, however, but he had walked in on a number of extremely disturbing experiments, the images of which had been seared into his retinas for all of time. The worst part, in Lestrade’s eyes, was that Ivy’s experiments actually tended to be even more disgusting and dangerous than her father’s.

“Where?” Sherlock asked.

“Brixton, Lauriston Gardens.”

“What’s new about this one? You wouldn’t have come to get me if there wasn’t something different.”

“You know how they never leave notes?”

“Yeah.”

“This one did. Will you come?”

He hesitated. “Who’s on forensics?”

“Anderson.”

“Anderson won’t work with me.”

“Well, he won’t be your assistant.”

“I _need_ an assistant.”

“I could be your assistant,” Ivy said.

“No,” Sherlock and Lestrade said simultaneously.

“Why not?” she asked, sounding genuinely childish for the first time since John had met her. “I know science. I’m good at science. We do experiments together all the time. How is this any different?”

“There’s a dead body,” Sherlock said bluntly.

“So?”

“Ivy, as advanced as you are for your age, there are some things I have been careful to keep you from being exposed to as of yet. While it is perfectly fine to discuss such things clinically, it is quite another to see them firsthand. To make use of a colloquialism, there are some lines you cannot uncross. You are not permitted to visit a crime scene at this age, especially not one of a violent death. As you know perfectly well.”

“You keep saying I’m too young. I’m not too young. I’m barely younger than you were when you solved your first crime.”

Sherlock’s face twisted briefly, for just half of a second, and Lestrade looked at him with concern.

“Yes, well,” Sherlock said. “You are not me. And I wouldn’t want you to be. This decision is final, Ivy.”

“But I—” she started, then seemed to get lost. “This isn’t fair.”

“You’ll appreciate it in time.”

“No I won’t. I’m mad and I’m going to stay mad. Forever.”

Sherlock looked her over and Lestrade cleared his throat. “Will you come?”

“Not in a police car. I’ll be right behind.”

“Thank you.” Lestrade turned and left.

“Wait! You _have_ to take me to the crime scene!” Ivy said triumphantly.

“What? No I don’t,” Sherlock said, just a touch too fast.

“Yes you do. Who’s gonna watch me when you’re gone? Uncle Myc is in Paraguay and Grandmere and Grandpa live in America. And last time you left me with one of your homeless network, they taught me how to shoplift and I stole £72.13 worth of candy from a convenience store.”

John’s head whipped around. He shot Sherlock a fiercely disapproving glare, and the other man grimaced.

“Oh, I can watch the little dearie,” Mrs. Hudson said. “It’ll be no trouble at all, Sherlock. And don’t even   _think_ about offering to pay me. I won’t have it, young man.”

“Mrs. Hudson, you’re a saint,” he said, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. The old woman chuckled warmly, giving him a quick squeeze around the waist.

And then Sherlock was shouting about Christmas and asking John if he liked trouble and suddenly, they were off.

* * *

There was an alpha sergeant guarding the taped-off crime scene. “Hello, Freak,” she greeted cheerily.

John was instantly on guard, unconsciously adopting a more aggressive posture. He wanted to step between Sherlock and this other asshole, but he didn’t. No. His omega could fight his own battles, he was brilliant all on his own.

His omega? God. No. John couldn’t start thinking like that. Sherlock was his flatmate, for one, and he had a seven-year-old daughter, for another. Even entertaining the idea was a disaster waiting to happen.

“I’m here to see Detective Inspector Lestrade,” Sherlock said.

“Why?” the sergeant snipped.

Sherlock gave her a look. “I was invited.”

“Why?”

“I think he wants me to take a look.”

“Well, you know what I think, don’t you?”

“Always, Sally.” His voice dropped low to a murmur. “I even know you didn’t make it home last night.”

Sally gaped, stumbling over her words and nostrils flaring. John’s fists clenched. “I, uh—Who’s this?”

“Colleague of mine, Dr. Watson. Dr. Watson, Sergeant Sally Donovan. An old friend.”

God, if this snarling, posturing excuse of an alpha was what Sherlock’s idea of an old friend was, then John was going to—

“A colleague? How do you get a colleague? What, did he follow you home?”

John gave a tight, warning smile. “Well now. A beautiful omega starts following me around, I’m hardly going to protest, am I? Now, the crime scene, if you please?”

Sally gave him a suspicious look and thumbed her walkie talkie. “Freak’s here. Bringing him in.”

* * *

“You may as well eat. We may have a long wait,” Sherlock said, discarding his menu. Ivy did the same. Sherlock’s eyes narrowed.

“Ivy, no. You have to eat.”

“Why? You aren’t.”

“Yes, but I’m an adult. I get to do things like that.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Ah, neither is life. Order some food.”

She folded her arms. “No,” she said. “You always say that digestion slows your mind down and distracts you. Hunger keeps the mind sharp. I don’t want to be _stupid,_ Dad. If you aren’t eating, then neither am I.”

John pursed his lips and kept his eyes fixed down on the menu. It wasn’t his business. Ivy wasn’t his daughter. This wasn’t his family. This entire situation was absolutely none of his business.

“I’m done growing, though. You aren’t. It doesn’t matter if I only eat every other day, as long as I have just enough calories to keep from passing out. See, my body is focused purely on sustaining functionality, whereas yours is directed towards growth, which requires vastly more energy and thus caloric input—”

 _“Okay,”_ John said. “Okay. I cannot listen to this. I don’t think there was a single part that was even remotely true. That is not at all how nutrition works. You two are both going to order something and then you’re going to sit there and eat every last bite, so help me God.”

Ivy sneered. “You aren’t our alpha.”

“This isn’t me being an alpha, this is me being a doctor. I did take a Hippocratic Oath, you know,” he said. “And order something with veg.”

Neither of them ordered anything with veg. Sherlock went so far as to pick all the mushrooms out of his dish and then give them to Ivy, who did eat them, as she was apparently vastly more mature than her own father.

John gave them a fifteen-minute lecture on nutrition and the benefits of a regular, healthy diet. He made a point of suggesting so-called ‘brain foods.’

Ivy ate half her plate and then started twirling designs in her marinara sauce with the tines of her fork, which John supposed was good enough. Sherlock was even more peckish.

The table eventually lulled into a hostile silence. Angelo’s candle flickered ominously. It made both the Holmeses look ghostly, like apparitions of spirits, all dark curls and unnaturally pale skin.

“People don’t have arch-enemies,” he said, mostly to break the silence.

“I’m sorry?” Sherlock said.

“In real life,” he said. “There are no arch-enemies in real life. Doesn’t happen.”

Ivy glanced over at her father. “Is he talking about--?”

“Yes.”

“He isn’t supposed to be back yet.”

“Came early. Must have rushed to finish things up. Sentiment.”

Ivy gave a half-laugh and took another bite of her lasagna.

“Sorry. Who did I meet?” John pressed.

Sherlock smiled wryly. “My arch-enemy.”

“Come on. Tell me for real. Who is he to you? Is he--?” His eyes skittered across the table. “Is he Ivy’s other parent?”

Sherlock choked on his water, gagging, some of it spurting out of his nose, while Ivy went deadly pale, looking horrified by the very idea. Sherlock’s face turned bright red and splotchy as he dissolved into a fit of coughing. Ivy pounded on his back, with dubious results.

 _“No,”_ Sherlock gasped out, still wheezing. “No, he is not Ivy’s other father. Don’t ever say anything like that ever again.”

“Sorry,” John said. “Didn’t mean to offend. It was just—well, he smelled a bit like you.”

“Yes. Dreadfully unfortunate, that, but there’s nothing that can be done,” he said. “And anyhow, a couple’s scents only change post-bonding. As you may have noticed, neither I nor _that man_ are bonded.”

“Right, sorry, yeah,” he said. “So do you… have anyone, then? A girlfriend?”

“Girlfriend? No, not really my area.”

“Oh. Boyfriend, then?” he asked. “Which is fine, by the way.”

“I know it’s fine,” Sherlock practically hissed. Ivy’s eyes were darting back and forth between the two of them, full of curiosity.

“So no boyfriend then?”

“No.”

“Great,” he said. “You’re unattached. Like me.”

Ivy’s eyebrows shot up and Sherlock frowned.

“John, um…” he started. “I think you should know that I consider myself married to my work, and that Ivy is the biggest priority in my life. I have no interest in bonding or forming any sort of romantic or sexual attachment to anyone, especially an alpha. While I’m flattered by your interest, I’m really not looking—”

“No, no, um—” He cleared his throat. “I wasn’t—asking. _No._ I’m just saying. It’s all fine.”

“Good,” Sherlock said. “Thank you.”

And then a taxi pulled up.


	3. Uncle Greg

Sherlock leapt up from the table and then immediately knelt down. Ivy instantly climbed onto his back, linking her arms around his neck like a vice, ready for her piggyback ride. The pair of them ran out of the restaurant. John swore, and scrambled to catch up.

He got out onto the street just in time to see Sherlock get hit by a slow-moving car and nearly drop Ivy across its hood in the process, but she clung tight like a monkey. Sherlock merely stumbled and kept moving, clearly unfazed by being slightly hit by cars.

“What the he—What’re you doing?” John panted when he finally caught up.

“Most efficient way to run with a seven-year-old.”

“But—”

“He’s getting away!” Ivy said.

John was swearing a storm up in his head.

“I’ve got the cab number,” he said aloud.

“Good for you,” Sherlock said. He paused, eyes squinting shut, and used the opportunity to readjust his grip on Ivy. He started muttering to himself, and then took off like a shot.

John let one swear loose, just a little one, and under his breath.

Five minutes later, Sherlock ran headfirst into the moving cab, and then shoved a (stolen) police badge at the windshield.

* * *

“What are you doing?” Sherlock snapped.

“Well, I knew you’d find the case, I’m not stupid,” Lestrade said.

It was a measure of Sherlock’s respect for the man that he did not contradict that. “You can’t just break into my flat.”

“You can’t withhold evidence! And I didn’t break into your flat.”

Sherlock was practically vibrating with anxiety at this point. He was holding onto Ivy’s wrist, but that really wasn’t enough, she should be behind him, there were strange alphas here, strange and dangerous alphas _invading their nest._

“What do you call this, then?” he burst out. How dare Lestrade do this? Betray him like this, bring all these strangers, these enemies, into their brand-new home, leaving their scents everywhere, touching and overturning all of their things.

_Disrupting._

“It’s a drugs bust,” Lestrade said, pleased with himself.

“Seriously? This guy, a junkie?” John said, almost laughing at the presumed absurdity. “Have you met him?”

“John…”

“Pretty sure you could search this flat all day and you wouldn’t find anything you could call recreational.”

“John, you probably want to shut up now.”

Ivy had been deadly silent this whole time, arms crossed and glaring daggers at anyone who passed by, but mostly Lestrade.

“But come on,” John said, and then he looked at Sherlock’s face. His eyes flicked back over to Ivy. “No.”

“Not since—” he started, too fast. He lowered. “Not since I got pregnant. I’m clean.” He whirled around, facing Lestrade again, moving to safer topics. “I’m not your sniffer dog.”

“No, Anderson’s my sniffer dog.”

“Ander—Wha—” He turned to face the kitchen. “Anderson! What are you doing here on a drugs bust?!”

“Oh, I volunteered,” he said.

“They all did,” Lestrade continued. “They’re not strictly on the drugs squad, but they’re very keen.”

Donovan popped round the corner, holding a jar full of yellow fluid and floating things. “Are these human eyes?”

“It’s for an experiment!” Sherlock snapped.

“They were in the microwave.”

“Out!” he shrieked. “Out out out! Everybody get out of my flat right this instant!”

“Sherlo—”

“No!” He actually stomped his foot. “No! This is my home, my nest, where I live with my child and I won’t have you vermin defiling it! You have two bloody minutes and not a second more, I swear to _God!”_

The protective rage of an alpha is feared around the world, to the point of being legendary, spoken of in awe-filled reverence.

But there’s nothing more brutally dangerous than an omega in defense of their nest and young.

Lestrade’s team scrambled out of the flat, some wasting precious seconds to pick up smaller equipment, but most leaving everything behind. John started edging towards the door, and Sherlock’s eyes cut to him sharply.

“Not you, John. You stay.” He turned to Lestrade, who hadn’t made the slightest motion to leave, apparently confident in his safety. Rightfully so, it seemed.

“Now,” he said. “You are going to tell me about Rachel, and I am going to tell you about the case.”

Lestrade nodded. “Alright.”

* * *

He didn’t get in the cab willingly.

Years ago, he would have, younger and bored out of his mind and with nothing to live for. The cabbie wouldn’t have even had to try that hard. Now, though, now he had Ivy, and even the criminal element knew what she meant to him.

So the cabbie leans in and pricks him with a needle and helps him into the cab when Sherlock sways. He makes a grand show of complaining about how obviously ‘drunk’ he is, and how he better be getting a good tip for this.

No one bats an eye.

The cab drives away.

* * *

They bring Ivy to the college and the second she’s let loose, she runs up to her dad and tackles him with a hug. She stays put firmly in his lap, clutching at him tightly while he endures Lestrade’s barrage of questions.

She refuses to let go of his hand when he goes to talk to John.

“It was you,” Ivy said plainly. “A good guy who was in the military. You have a gun, of course you have a gun. Many veterans feel uncomfortable without one, and you have PTSD.”

John gaped.

“Thank you,” Sherlock said. “From both of us.”

“Yes, well.” He cleared his throat. “I, uh—It was no problem.” He nodded crisply. “I’d do it again.”

Sherlock grinned, looking at him like he was a mystery. “Would you like to—”

“Sherlock,” John whispered. “That’s him, that’s the man I was talking to you about.”

“I know exactly who that is.” He strode _towards_ the threat purposefully, the fool, and John once again cursed Sherlock bloody Holmes even as he followed. And hell, if Ivy didn’t look scared, then he couldn’t either.

And John feels _alive,_ blood thrumming through his veins, hand completely still and motionless. He’s known Sherlock for just over a day, and he’s already killed for him and sworn he would do it again. And now he’s walking at his side to go see _the most dangerous man he’d ever met,_ and it felt like walking into battle.

“So, another case cracked. How very public-spirited. Though that’s never really your motivation, is it?”

Sherlock ignored that. “What are you doing here?”

“As ever, I am concerned about you.”

“What happened to the election in Paraguay?” Ivy asked.

“It’s been handled.”

“Delegation, brother dear? I’m surprised you trust anyone enough for that. You do so love to micromanage.”

“Sorry, what?” John asked. “Brother?”

“Brother, yes, he’s my brother,” Sherlock said. “Gaining weight again?”

“Losing it, in fact.”

“He’s your brother?”

“Of course he’s my brother.”

“So he’s not…”

“Not what?”

“I don’t know. Criminal mastermind?”

Sherlock tossed his head. “Close enough.”

“For goodness’ sake,” Mycroft snapped. “I occupy a minor position in the British government.”

“It’s classified. He won’t tell us what the position is. Not even Uncle Greg knows,” Ivy said, eyes wide.

“I know enough to realize that he _is_ the British government, when he’s not too busy being the British Secret Service or the CIA on a freelance basis. Good evening, Mycroft. Try not to start a war before I get home. You know what it does for the traffic.”

Sherlock stalked off, Ivy in hand, but she wriggled out of his grip to give her uncle a quick hug. Mycroft’s eyebrows flew up, and he patted her on the shoulder awkwardly.

“Bye! See you at the wedding!” Ivy said, disappearing and running off to her father, just like that.

John hung back. “So—so when you say you’re concerned about him, you actually are concerned?”

“Yes, of course.”

“It actually is a childish feud?”

“He’s always been so resentful. You can imagine the Christmas dinners.”

“Yeah…” John said absently, then he processed that sentence. “No. God no. I’d better, um—”

“Before you go, Dr. Watson,” he said. “You should know that my family means the world to me. No doubt Sherlock told you some woefully exaggerated tale of the extent of my power. I am not, as he thinks, omniscient. However—” He leaned in closer, and John refused to waver, holding fast to his position, “—exaggeration or not, I am a powerful man. When people speak of having higher connections, I am the one those connections lead to. Should you harm a hair on Sherlock or Ivy’s heads, I will not have you killed. I will, however, make you disappear. So completely that there will be no trace of Dr. John Watson in the world, as if he never lived, and the only record of your pitiful existence will be your sister’s rapidly fading, alcohol-laden memories. Are we clear?”

John’s jaw clenched. “Very.”

* * *

John finished moving in the next morning, and Sherlock spent the time at Scotland Yard, giving his statement to Inspector Lestrade—who, as it turned out, was Ivy’s so-called ‘Uncle Greg.’ No one the man had felt perfectly safe around a near-feral Sherlock. He had known he was close enough to be included under the umbrella of protection.

By the time John finished hauling up the last few boxes, Sherlock and Ivy had returned from the office, along with Lestrade and that horrible alpha from last night. Sherlock immediately flounced off to his room and left John alone to deal with them.

“Right,” he said. “Uh, tea? Would you like some? Detective Inspector?”

“Ah, just Greg’s fine, and sure, I’d love a cuppa.”

“Just milk in mine, thanks,” Donovan said, folding her arms. John gave her an acidic smile.

He went off to the kitchen and returned a few minutes later, laden down with teacups. Already filled, of course—his and Greg’s black and Donovan’s filled with milk and spit.

“So what’s all this about, then?” he asked, settling into his armchair. Greg and Donovan took seats on the sofa.

“About a week ago, Sherlock was helping us out on a drug smuggling case. Things escalated, and there have been four homicides connected so far. We know everything, but we’ve been waiting to make the arrests. It’s important to get the timing right, ya see? If we don’t take down the whole ring at once, then it’ll just rebuild itself. We need to get everyone. The kingpin, the smugglers, the dealers, everyone.”

John nodded.

Donovan sighed. “We’re putting together a sting operation at SubZero tonight. Sending in six undercover officers. Well, five officers and the Freak, actually.”

John growled without even realizing he was doing it. All three of them looked equally shocked.

“…He’ll be wearing a wire the entire time,” Greg said. “We’ll know the second anything starts heading south. ‘Sides, Donovan will be with him.”

“What?”

She sighed. “We’re going to be posing as a couple having a night out. We have to spend the next five hours in close proximity so our scents can mingle.” She wrinkled her nose distastefully.

“Actually, John, uh… I don’t suppose you could keep your distance from Sherlock for a bit? It’s just, well, you’re an alpha—”

“Yeah, yeah, I completely get it,” he said. “Don’t worry. Um. Is there anything I can do to help? Or--?”

“Just stay about six meters away from the Freak for a night. Shouldn’t be that hard,” Donovan said.

Sherlock burst out of his room at that exact moment. He was wearing ripped black skinny jeans and a gray t-shirt that left nothing to the imagination. He was dripping in chains and necklaces and earrings, even had a hoop in one nostril and a leather cuff around his wrist. His hair was messier than normal, but intentionally so. Artfully tousled.

“Laying it on a bit thick, are we?” Donovan asked. Sherlock rolled his eyes.

“And what do you intend to wear? Regular office attire, but with high heels rather than flats? Who could possibly guess you were a cop then?”

“Nice,” she said. “Will you be bringing your kid along? Nice daddy-daughter outing to the nightclub? Maybe she can meet some drug dealers.”

“John’s watching Ivy tonight.”

“I am?” he asked.

“Yes, of course,” he said. “You have no plans and I will pay you.”

“No, that’s fine,” he said. “Just next time, give me a little bit more notice, alright?”

Sherlock nodded. He strode over to the couch, and the two police officers rose. Donovan and Sherlock regretfully linked hands, looking like they fully expected to catch cooties from mere proximity. A quirk of a smile played across Lestrade’s lips. He gave a friendly nod to John, and led them out the door.


	4. The Importance of Precision

They spent the remaining five hours before the operation at Donovan’s flat, going over the details of the plan. She changed into clubbing gear as well—a shimmery purple dress, leather jacket, choker, and tights. Sherlock raised an eyebrow at it.

“You’re clearly uncomfortable,” he said. “You feel you’ll draw too much attention to yourself in that outfit. You’re wrong, of course, we’re to be at a club, after all. But it would not raise any alarms if you were to wear trousers and more subdued colors. It would offer you greater mobility, as well.” He tilted his head. “You must know this. Yet you chose the dress regardless. Are you uncomfortable with your femininity? Is it because you’re an alpha, and working in a male-dominated field, to boot? Statistically, female alphas—”

“Shut up,” she said. “I’m not ‘uncomfortable with my femininity.’ Who the hell do you think I am? I’m not wearing this dress to prove anything, and certainly not to please men. I’m wearing it to hide the bloody thigh holster.”

“Ah.”

Lestrade glanced between them. “If you two are quite finished,” he said. “We’ve got about an hour and a half before we have to be there. Come on. Let’s go get dinner, my treat.”

* * *

They were finally admitted to the club and Sherlock started tugging Sally along, only to be yanked back by her sharply.

“Follow my lead,” she hissed. “I’m your alpha. You’re my omega. Act like it.”

Sherlock nodded, slowing his pace. He adopted a demure posture, following Sally a half-step behind, his head bowed. She led him out to the center of the dance floor and started moving, giving a gruff command for him to do the same, her eyes trailing over him hungrily.

Sherlock obeyed unquestioningly, putting on a show for his alpha, and a large number of others nearby as well. He and Sally would lean into each other, lips brushing along ears when they needed to relay information.

Over the course of the night, they identified seven drug dealers, consumed three or four drinks each, got into a row while sneaking around employee-restricted areas, eked a confession out of frightened henchman they found quite on accident (which confirmed the location of the drugs depot), confirmed Simon’s presence, and got blisters all over their feet.

At 12:13 precisely, Lestrade gave the signal from outside and police officers swarmed in, quickly and efficiently putting the club on lockdown.

* * *

Sherlock had not been this physically exhausted since his uni days. It was incomprehensible, too, as he had actually slept the night before, for a full five hours. He supposed it was only natural, working multiple high-tension cases simultaneously, as well as managing three experiments, Ivy’s experiments, raising Ivy, and being in the middle of a move. Plus, the only thing he had eaten in the pass three days was tea and that dinner at Angelo’s. While he firmly maintained that hunger did, in fact, sharpen the mind (though the effects were dulled somewhat due to the light-headedness), it also came with fatigue and weakness and a permanent knot of pain/nausea in his stomach that got steadily worse whether he ate or didn’t eat. Regular meals would eventually make it go away, but until his body got readjusted, even trying to fix the problem just added to his suffering.

He didn’t actually like being hungry. He hated it even. He hated having to stand up slowly and take a moment before moving, every single time. He hated how slow and weak his body became, how easy it was for criminals to overtake or escape him. He hated having his vision tunnel to nearly a pinprick while he kept moving by memory, trying to pretend all was normal. He hated the look of _fear-worry-concern_ that would flash in Ivy’s eyes every time she saw him wobble.

And yet he knew he didn’t deserve to feel any better. He deserved the pain, actually, when you got right down to it. He was only good for his brain, so he would do anything, sacrifice any comfort, to keep it in peak condition.

He dragged his body up the stairs and into 221B, already removing the false piercings and stuffing them into his pockets.

John was asleep on the couch, head lolled backwards. The telly flickered color over him, the volume a low murmur with the subtitles on. Ivy was curled up on his lap, head tucked against his chest. A knitted throw blanket from an elderly client was draped over the both of them.

Sherlock closed the door behind him as slowly and silently as he was capable of.

He hadn’t taken more than two steps forward when John’s eyes shot open. They lasered onto him instantly, though the rest of his body remained perfectly still and relaxed.

“Hey,” he said quietly. “Ivy wanted to wait up for you. She was worried.”

Sherlock approached the couch and lifted his sleeping daughter, blanket and all, with John’s assistance. She made a soft sound and stirred a bit, then proceeded to snuggle against Sherlock’s chest and breathe him in.

“Thank you for watching her,” he murmured.

“Oh, it’s no problem. She’s an amazing kid.”

Sherlock smiled. “She is, isn’t she?” He placed a kiss on her curls and then hefted her more securely into his arms.

He carried Ivy up the steps to her bedroom and placed her in the bed, tucking the sheets around her gently. Her eyes cracked open partway, and she blinked at him blearily.

“Dad?”

“Shhh, Ivy. It’s alright. I’m back. Go back to sleep now, dear.”

* * *

John was the first one up in the morning, and set about making a full fry-up, alternating humming and whistling to himself. Both the Holmeses were down shortly—Sherlock wearing a black tuxedo, complete with boutonniere, and looking like he had just stepped off the pages of a magazine; and Ivy in yesterday’s rumpled clothes and her hair in such a big knot that it had become a separate organism and was fighting for independence.

She stared at John squintily. “What are you doing?”

“Cooking,” he said. “Wanna help?”

She approached with caution. John gave her a reassuring smile.

“You can make the eggs, yeah? You just tap them lightly on the side of the bowl—little harder, now—just like that. Then you pour the yoke and white in… Oh, might wanna pick out that bit of shell. Don’t want our eggs to be crunchy now, do we?”

She shook her head seriously, intently focused on her task.

“Alright, now you pour in a splash of milk.”

“A splash?”

“A splash.”

She opened one of the kitchen cupboards, which was filled—disturbingly—with just science equipment, and pulled out a graduated cylinder. “How many milliliters are in a splash?”

“Um,” he said. “Uh. Some. Here, I’ll show you.” He took the milk jug and tipped it over, pouring in a bit. “A splash.”

Ivy frowned. “That’s non-replicable.”

John shrugged. “Cooking’s like that sometimes.”

“But what if it’s too milky? Or not milky enough? What if your arm slips and you accidentally pour in too much? You could ruin the eggs, John.”

“Well,” he said. “Then we’ll make new eggs.”

She frowned deeper. “That’s too much room for error.”

“Cooking is an imprecise and dubious art at best, Ivy. Best to leave it to the professionals,” Sherlock said, flipping the page in his morning paper. Ivy made a frustrated noise. She shoved the bowl away and folded her arms.

“Hey,” John said. “It’s not that hard once you get the hang of it. It can even be fun. And it’s more of a science than an art. It’s a lot of chemistry, actually. It can be learned.”

Ivy looked up at him, with just the slightest glimmer of hope.

“You like things to be precise, yeah?” John asked. She nodded. “Okay. That’ll work then. Cooking actually has loads of rules. Makes it very easy. You can start doing your own thing once you get the basics down. For now, add in… one teaspoon of salt and pepper each.”

Five minutes later, breakfast was done, complete with pancakes, sausage, and scrambled eggs. John had drawn a ketchup smiley face on Ivy’s eggs, which had secretly delighted her and utterly repulsed Sherlock. But he kept glancing over at it and watching her eat with enthusiasm, and eventually added ketchup to his own eggs. As an experiment, of course.

He ended up gagging, but manfully hid it and choked down all the eggs anyway. Ivy babbled away excitedly about how she was going to have John teach her to cook every food there was. John smiled and signed away what sounded like the rest of his natural life.

“So,” he said to Sherlock. “Is there any particular reason you’re wearing a tux to breakfast?”

“Wedding,” he said. Ivy squeaked, eyes going wide.

“That’s today?!”

“Yes. Of course,” Sherlock said. “Don’t worry, it doesn’t start ‘til ten. You still have plenty of time to get ready.”

“It’s 8:37! Okay. If it takes a half hour to get there by train, and ten minutes to get from here onto a train, then we have to leave the flat at absolutely no later than 9:20. Preferably, we would leave earlier. Molly said she would be here at 9:00. If we leave at 9:10 exactly, then that leaves ten minutes for you two to talk alone, _and_ we’ll still get there ten minutes early. So that means I have…” She started counting on her fingers, mouthing numbers. “Thirty-three minutes to get ready. Ah! Thirty-two!”

John blinked. “You’re very good at math.”

She gave him a condescending look. “It’s basic addition.”

“Most seven-year-olds are just learning how to tell time, though. You’re very advanced for your age.”

“Why did you account ten minutes for me and Molly to talk?” Sherlock asked.

“No reason.” She swabbed the last few bites of pancake through her syrup, already standing as she finished them off. “I’ve gotta go, Dad. I only have thirty-two minutes!”

She ran up the room, pounding up the stairs. Sherlock stared after her in confusion. “Why would she…?”

“So. You and Molly, huh?” John asked.

Sherlock looked even more confused.

“Going to a wedding together. That’s… pretty serious,” he said. “I saw her flirting with you at Bart’s the other day, didn’t realize you were already together.”

“We’re not.”

John arched an eyebrow.

Sherlock paled. “Does inviting someone as a plus-one to my brother’s wedding have romantic connotations?”

“Your _brother’s—_ Christ, Sherlock,” he said. “Going to weddings together is something _serious couples_ do. Close family members’ weddings, even moreso.”

Sherlock swore.

And at that moment, there was a knock at the door.

Sherlock rose from the table with the air of a man going to his execution.

“Molly!” he greeted, flinging open the door. “There’s been a change of plans. John’s going with us.”

“I… I’m sorry?” she asked.

“Don’t be. John and I have just moved in together and I think it very important that he be here for this occasion. You understand, don’t you?”

Her face crumbled. “I… yes.”

“Great! John, go upstairs, thrown on a suit, it doesn’t matter which one. I don’t care if you embarrass Mycroft.”

“I—Sherlock, I can’t just show up to your brother’s wedding uninvited!”

Sherlock was in the process of trying to physically shove John up the stairs. It wasn’t going well for him.

“Of course you can. I’m the best man, I can bring whoever the hell I want.”

“No, you cannot! Sherlock, Mycroft planned for a specific number of guests. He did not plan on wedding crashers. He probably spent hours coming up with the assigned seating and figuring out exactly how many dinners were needed. It’s called a plus- _one_ for a reason.”

Sherlock paused. Considered. He looked over to Molly and opened his mouth—

“No!” John shouted. “No. Okay, fine, I’ll put on the bloody suit. But you’re the one who has to explain all this to Mycroft.”

“Excellent,” he grinned.


	5. Wedding

They arrived fifteen minutes early and Ivy made Sherlock redo her hair on the train three times.

The wedding was in a park and it was beautifully, horrifically sunny out. There were _birds. Chirping._

Mycroft came to greet them upon arrival and he looked _happy._

“This is a monstrosity,” Sherlock muttered.

Mycroft’s eyes glided over them. “I said you could bring _one_ guest.”

“I could leave,” John said quickly.

Sherlock put a hand on his arm. “If John leaves, then I leave.”

Mycroft closed his eyes briefly. “I suppose if this the worst you do today, then I will consider it a success. _Do not_ take that as a challenge.”

Sherlock’s eyes gleamed.

Ivy tugged on his coatsleeve, and he leaned down. She whispered something in his ear, hand cupped to hide the words, and he nodded. She ran off instantly.

“The grounds are manicured. There are no mushrooms,” Mycroft said.

Sherlock shrugged. “You never know when they might pop up.”

John almost asked. Almost.

* * *

Ivy was carefully, slowly, walking around a tree and examining its bark. This was her second tree of the day. The one before had proven to be a dud.

A stampede of feet came running up behind, and she turned to see Laura, grinning and with a finger over her lips. She went around to the other side of the tree and pressed herself up against it.

Ivy moved on to another tree. She was careful to inspect the ground around her as she moved.

Charlie and Thomas came running up thirty seconds later. “Have you seen Laura?” Thomas asked, breathless.

Ivy pointed wordlessly.

“Traitor!” Laura yelled, and took off running. Charlie giggled and ran after her.

“Hey, Ivy, you wanna play with us?” Thomas asked.

She hesitated. It was highly unlikely she would find any mushrooms, and even if she did, they would likely be common ones she had already encountered before. Nothing new for her spore prints. The grass had been clipped less than twelve hours ago, and it hadn’t rained since. Even small, common mushrooms were highly unlikely.

She had a mild internal debate over searching for lichen or playing with her new cousins, and before she was even finished weighing pros and cons, Thomas shrugged.

“Suit yourself,” he said, and took off.

He was just passing the previous tree when Ivy ran off after him. He threw a glance back and grinned when he saw her.

* * *

“Look at you! The wedding’s starting in two minutes and you’ve been running through the dirt! Charlie! You have _leaves_ and _twigs_ in your hair!”

She grinned impishly. Grandmère scoffed and began straightening her hair, smoothing it back into something resembling a style. Thomas tried rubbing the caked-on dirt off the knees of his trousers. Ivy straightened her hairbow primly.

“Come on, come on. We mustn’t be late.” Mrs. Holmes tugged her grandchildren into places. Laura and Ivy were to be flower girls, and Thomas and Charlie ringbearers.

Greg and Mycroft didn’t have a ton of people lined up to be groomsmen, and ended up standing at the altar with just Sherlock and Sally, who were subsequently trailed by children.

Beta-beta marriages weren’t unusual, but a couple matching in both sex, gender, and secondary gender was something of a rarity. Everyone of even moderate importance in the British government was in attendance, as well as the entirety of New Scotland Yard.

John was sitting next to Molly, who looked defeated and miserable. “Is that the prime minister?”

Her eyes flicked over and she nodded, mutely. John blinked rapidly.

The ceremony itself was short, the couple using generic vows, and then the guests all moved into some grand hotel for the reception.

The longer this went on the more John wondered why, precisely, Sherlock needed to get a flatshare. His family was clearly well to-do, and it obviously wasn’t just Mycroft’s self-made money. Hell, his parents were wearing outfits that looked like they cost more than the entirety of 221. Their wedding gift to the happy couple had been a Lamborghini and a matching set of engraved Rolexes.

(Mycroft already had a house he was perfectly happy with—three, actually, and Greg had recently found a reason to move out of his crappy broke-divorcee bachelor pad.)

They took an inordinate amount of wedding pictures (some of which involved Sherlock and Sally tensely posing together while Greg made jokes about when their own wedding would be), and then Mycroft wheeled his husband off to go make polite greetings to every politician in the entirety of the British Isles.

Sherlock collapsed dramatically in a seat next to John, with Molly on his other side. Ivy was out on the floor, dancing with her cousins and some other children that had accumulated from who-knows-where, looking confused while the others talked back and forth rapid-fire.

They ate a catered meal quickly, over strained, forcedly-neutral conversation about politics.

“—and that’s what this new legislature is going to accomplish. If we can just get the bill through, it will put family values back in their proper place in British society, as our top priority. It all starts in the home, you know. The children have to come first,” a lord of somewhere or other said.

“Children?” Sherlock asked. “Or fetuses?”

The lord rolled his eyes. “They’re _babies,_ you obnoxious pants-wetting liberal. You people are so cold. You know, if you had half a brain or a shred of decency in you, you’d see that the continuation of the species is a good thing.”

“Omegas and beta women are more than breeding machines.”

“And babies are human lives. No matter how young they are.”

“If you truly cared about putting families first, you would focus on family services and quality of life. All anti-abortion measures accomplish is pump out more babies to unwilling and unready parents who have no social supports or ability to care for them. At worst, it leads to back-alley procedures and more deaths.”

“There’s always adoption.”

“Yes, and perhaps that would be a more viable option if you haven’t actively worked to prevent same-sex adoption and made it markedly more inaccessible for LGBT couples and single parents. You don’t care about those children, you don’t care about finding them loving homes, you just care about creating as many perfect British clone-families as possible, you soulless, slimy hypocrite.”

Sherlock stood and straightened his suit jacket, tapping a fork against a flute of champagne. The lord gaped.

“May I have your attention, everyone,” he said. The crowd quieted. “As you are all well aware, today was the wedding of my brother, Lord Mycroft Evander Holmes, and his love, Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade. As the best man, it is traditional that I make a speech of some sort.”

John looked over to the newlyweds and saw both of them go deadly pale, looking frozen in horror. This was unplanned. This was definitely unplanned.

Sally Donovan tensed, rising slightly up out of her seat. She looked ready to tackle Sherlock to the floor at any moment.

“I have never liked my brother,” he said. “Well. I used to. When I was young, and foolish, and didn’t know any better.”

John closed his eyes, wincing, and started counting backwards from 100.

“But I have always liked Lestrade. He is Scotland Yard’s least incompetent officer, and everyone there is too foolish to realize how lucky they are to have him. He has saved my life on at least three occasions. In truth, he was already and always has been family to me.

“Mycroft and Gregory met through me. They are both meddlesome busybodies who cannot mind their own business and worry needlessly. They began meeting up to compound and coordinate their mutual anxiety. This somehow progressed into what I can only assume is a codependent relationship.”

Greg was gripping his fork tightly, looking ready to murder Sherlock.

“Nevertheless, I cannot deny that both of them have been sickeningly happy together ever since. They do appear to be deeply and truly in love. So, instead of denying it, I’m going to take credit for it. You’re welcome.”

The guests tittered.

“Also thanks for allowing Ivy to be a flower girl. She was extremely excited about it, seemed to consider it a great honor. That’s about all I had to say, so I’m just going to finish this speech off with this: Mycroft, if you screw this up and hurt Greg again, I will never take another assignment from you ever and also I’ll systematically destroy all of your belongings. Including the houses.” He nodded. “That’s all. Sally, your turn.”

“I don’t have a speech,” she hissed.

He arched an eyebrow.

Glaring furiously, she stood, and then cleared her throat.

“Um,” she said. “Greg is… a friend. A friend and my boss. I’m honored to work with him. He is both a good man and a great man, and, um… I’m happy he’s found happiness. If anyone deserves it, it’s him.”

She sat down abruptly, face burning.

“You’re an arse,” John whispered.

“I know,” Sherlock whispered back.

* * *

“Oh!” Sherlock said suddenly. They were on a train back to London by now. “John, I forgot to mention. I’ve agreed to watch Gavin and Mycroft’s three children while they’re away on their honeymoon.”

“What?” he said. “Wait, Gavin? I thought his name was Greg?”

“Calling Lestrade by his actual name is a courtesy I only provided due to it being his wedding day.”

“I… Three kids, Sherlock? Where are we going to put them all? 221B doesn’t have the room.”

“221C does.”

“We aren’t storing children in a cement basement, Sherlock. It’s damp. They’ll catch cold.”

“That wasn’t the plan anyway. I was merely pointing out the logical gaps in your argument,” he said. “I’ll be staying at Mycroft’s London townhouse for the next two weeks. Ivy will be coming with me.” He gave John a shrewd look. “You should appreciate having the flat to yourself while you can. It is bound to happen frequently, given the nature of my work, but not usually for this great a length of time.”

“Ah. Yeah, I suppose.”

Sherlock nodded, and that was that.

* * *

Mycroft’s main house was spacious, far too spacious to be justifiable for central London. It had two stories and a basement, elegant stonework, a porch with columns, and balconies and a large patio in the back. The Lestrade children squealed when they saw it, running inside and fighting to claim rooms.

“You forgot your suitcases!” Sherlock called. “I am _not_ carrying them in for you!”

They were long gone.

“I will throw your bags on the ground and leave them to rot!” he called, vainly, at the house. “Ugh.”

“I can help you carry them, Dad,” Ivy said.

“No. We are going to throw them on the ground and leave them there. I’ll go talk to the movers for a sec, tell them not to move them. You can go on inside.”

She nodded, then grinned, running after her cousins. The movers began unloading boxes from the truck, and Sherlock unceremoniously dumped his nieces’ and nephew’s overnight bags out on the lawn.

* * *

The Lestrades did, eventually, carry their bags in. This was after the initial hour of claiming repurposed guest rooms as their own and thoroughly exploring the house. Laura had insisted on a bedroom with a balcony, and was talking about getting a canopy for over her bed. Charlie had packed markers in her overnight bag and gotten them out and started coloring on the walls while Sherlock wasn’t looking. And then, later, while Sherlock was looking.

“What are you drawing?” he asked.

“Family,” she said. She was on stick figure #8 so far. “My room has a jungle in it.”

Sherlock hummed. “Did you draw it?”

“Uh-huh. It’s got lions and tigers and giraffes and elephants and those colorful birds that I forget what they’re called. Plus trees. Lots and lots of trees. With vines.”

“You are aware that not all of those animals live in the jungle, correct?”

“What?”

“Some of them belong in the savanna biome.”

“What’s a subhannah?”

“A savanna is a grassy plain in tropical or subtropical regions with few trees.”

“Oh.”

“The public education system in this country is a disgrace. I am taking you all to the zoo tomorrow.”

Thomas popped up excitedly from the couch. “Really?!”

“Of course. I said it, didn’t I?” he said. He turned back to Charlie. “Then you can draw a more scientifically accurate jungle on your walls, and maybe a savanna as well. As many biomes as you want.”

Charlie’s eyes lit up. “How many biomes are there?”

“It’s debatable, but the number is between four and twelve.”

“You aren’t mad about her coloring on the walls?” Thomas asked.

“Of course not. Why would I be?” He smiled. “We can make a project of it. After we’re done at the zoo, we can pick up some paint. Do this right. You want it to be permanent, don’t you?”

Charlie nodded eagerly.


	6. Sherlock Watches Children

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the johnlock buildup resumes after this chapter, i promise

Sherlock had not anticipated the social image he projected as a lone, unbonded omega dragging four children around the zoo.

He ended up hauling a giant bag of child paraphernalia around, including: five water bottles, a bag of pretzels, several bags of Scooby Doo snacks, Charlie’s epipen, Charlie’s stuffed toy leopard, Laura’s purse that made her seem mature but held only a phone and nail polish, Ivy’s spore print book, two hoodies, and Thomas’s DS.

Then he was sexually harassed by a beta.

Thomas fell in love with the butterfly house and the aquarium. Ivy and Charlie asked endless questions. Laura pretended to be disinterested in everything because “zoos are for babies” but she loved the penguins.

Sherlock dragged them all to the nearest craft store after and gave Laura £200 for all the children to decide mutually on how to spend.

The kids bounded straight to Charlie’s room with their paints and Sherlock flopped on the livingroom couch, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes.

* * *

“Where are you guys going?” Ivy asked.

“School,” Thomas said. He slung his backpack onto his shoulders.

“Don’t you go to school?” Laura asked.

She shook her head. “My daddy homeschools me.”

Thomas snorted. “That’s lame.” Laura glared and punched him in the shoulder. “Ow! What was that for?”

“Be nice, dipshit.”

 _“You’re_ the dipshit!” He shoved her. Laura gasped and shoved him back, harder.

“Hey! Sherlock! Laura shoved me!”

“I did not!”

“Did to!”

“He started it!”

“No, you started it!”

“It doesn’t matter who started it,” Sherlock snapped, stepping into the foyer with them. “Both of you should have been smart enough to not get involved. Honestly, have you no self-control?”

Laura sneered and Thomas rolled his eyes. Sherlock glanced over the four children.

“Charlie and Ivy,” he said. “After school, we’re going to that candy shop you all like and you can pick out anything you want. _Only_ Charlie and Ivy.”

“What?!”

“That’s no fair!”

“New rule,” Sherlock said. “From now on, at the end of every day, we’ll go to the candy store and whoever’s been good that day and not gotten into any trouble can pick out one candy of their choosing. Now get going, the bus’ll be here any minute.”

Laura flipped him off on the way out the door.

* * *

Thomas and Laura were downstairs in the media room, playing a very loud shooting game. Their screams were almost as loud as the false gunfire.

Ivy was up with Charlie in her room, painting on the walls. They couldn’t reach much higher than halfway up to paint, but that was okay. Charlie had started in on the rainforest biome, while Ivy was still adding finishing touches to the savanna. She was going to put a desert on the other side of it when she was done, and then a tundra, because a tundra is the same thing as a desert, but cold instead of hot.

“What’s school like?” Ivy asked.

“Boring,” Charlie said.  “We have to do learning.” She wrinkled her nose.

Ivy was quiet for a moment. She was adding stripes on a lion’s mane. Very colorful orange and brown ones, sometimes red.

“I like learning,” she said.

* * *

The shopping cart was full of groceries in plastic bags. Charlie was hanging onto Sherlock’s neck like a monkey and Thomas was riding on the other end of the cart, pretending he was surfing. Ivy’s hand was tucked into Sherlock’s, and Laura was walking on his other side, swinging her purse around and talking about her crush at school.

The theft alarm went blaring as they walked through the doors.

The manager came scurrying towards them, red-faced and panting. Sherlock suppressed a deep sigh.

“Which one of you stole?” he asked.

“How dare you?” Laura said.

“Yeah. Why do you think, just because—”

“Charlie.”

The six-year-old’s lip wobbled. She burst out crying, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. She started blabbering incomprehensibly, just as the manager arrived.

“I did not commit intentional theft,” Sherlock said. “It appears my niece here grabbed something off one of the shelves. It’ll be returned to you as soon as we locate it.”

Thomas had hopped off the cart and gone over to his little sister, speaking in soft, soothing tones. Charlie’s snuffling began to slow and quiet. Eventually, she pointed a wobbling finger towards Laura. The older girl’s eyebrows shot up.

“I didn’t steal anything!” she cried.

“It’s in your purse,” Thomas said. He took it from her and unzipped it, revealing seven Hot Wheels cars.

Thomas handed them back to the manager. Sherlock gave the man a thin smile and made no apologies.

* * *

Sherlock only left the house for three and a half hours. He had left Laura in charge. Laura was eleven. She was old enough to have a babysitting job. She was certainly old enough to watch her siblings and cousin for a few hours.

The crime scene was dull, obvious, and managed by Donovan in Lestrade’s stead. Sherlock was genuinely surprised that she had invited him. Perhaps she didn’t truly dislike him as much as she professed.

He solved the case for her in two hours, and then…

Then he realized this was the first time he had been alone and purely in the company of adults in a week by this point.

He had gone to his favorite London café and ordered an indulgently sweet coffee and a chocolate-chip croissant. He had taken his time eating. He had read the paper and checked his website for new cases. He had gone to his favorite eccentric book collector’s store and browsed their selection of textbooks. They had a new one on lichenology. He resolved to buy it for Ivy for Christmas.

And then, begrudgingly, he went back to Mycroft’s house.

“This wasn’t my fault,” was the first thing Laura said.

“How much did you spend?” he asked gravely.

 _“They,_ and it was only £1000.”

“£1265,” Thomas corrected.

Sherlock looked around the destroyed house. “We’ll have to hire professional cleaners,” he said. “We have no hope of salvaging this ourselves. And repairmen. _God!_  Okay. You are all in trouble. You are going to start cleaning. You are going to keep it up for three hours, with allowances for a ten-minute break each hour. In the morning, we will repeat the process. Then I will contact professionals to finish the job and we are going to go out and by Mycroft a new couch, as clearly that thing is beyond repair. There will be no using the Xbox or PlayStation for the next week. Are we clear?”

The children nodded eagerly, apparently thinking they’d got off easy.

* * *

“Dad, I’m bored.”

“Your cousins will be back in less than six hours. You can play with them then.”

“But I’m bored _now.”_

Sherlock shrugged. Ivy spun around in an office chair, kicking her legs out.

“Do you think my mold experiments are fruiting yet?”

“Highly likely. They’ve been left in the cupboard for nine days now,” he said. “Do you want to return to 221B and check on them?”

She shook her head. “Food rots best when left to its own devices. I’ve already done everything I can to ensure mold production. Disturbing it would just dislodge spores.”

Sherlock nodded succinctly.

“I’m still bored.”

“So am I. Do you have any suggestions?”

She flopped over bonelessly in the chair. “No.”

“Do you want to go to the park? You can hunt for mushrooms and I can people-watch.”

Ivy nodded, perking up.

“Excellent. You left your mushrooming bag by the fridge, I believe. Meet me in the foyer in five minutes.”

* * *

“There’s no need to keep hiding the toad,” Sherlock said.

Thomas paled. “What?”

“I know you have a toad in your pocket that you are intending to keep as a pet and have been hiding from me, or attempting to do so, anyway. There’s no need. I approve wholeheartedly of your toad. Be sure to do the appropriate research on its care and maintenance.”

“Really? I can keep him?”

“Of course,” he said. “We can go to the pet store right now and pick up food and supplies for a habitat. Best to get that done as soon as possible.”

Thomas beamed. “His name is Billy,” he said. “I found him in the garbage.”

“Excellent. Why were you going through the garbage?”

Thomas shrugged, and slipped his hand into his uncle’s.

* * *

“What are we having for supper?” Laura asked.

“Depends. What’s in the fridge?” Sherlock replied.

“Um…” She went to open it. “Shredded cheese. Cottage cheese. A little bit of milk, but it’s expired. Half a bagel. And that thing in the Tupperware container.”

“Would you like to eat the thing in the Tupperware container?”

“No. It needs to be thrown out.”

“Hm,” he said. He began opening and closing cupboards at random.

Jam. Jam. Brown sugar. Flour. Cream of spinach soup (he held that out in offering, but Laura shook her head firmly). Aha! A bag of crisps.

“How do you all feel about endless nachos for supper?”

The children cheered.

* * *

Laura and Thomas approached him hesitantly, guilty looks on their faces. Sherlock flipped off his phone, game of sudoku paused for now.

“So, um,” Laura started.

“What did you do?” Sherlock asked. The children exchanged a glance.

“Thomas ate a whole bunch of Tide pods and now his stomach hurts.”

“How many?”

“We were going for the whole box, but it wasn’t full to start with, and I ended up leaving three in there ‘cause my stomach started hurting and I thought—”

“How many Tide pods did you eat, Thomas?”

“…Eight.”

“And why did you eat the Tide pods?”

“Because Laura dared me to!”

“I did not!”

“You did so! You said, ‘Hey Thomas, bet you can’t eat a whole box of Tide pods’ and I said—”

“That wasn’t a dare! I was just saying! And I was right, anyway, you _couldn’t_ eat the whole box!”

Sherlock stood abruptly, and both the children fell silent. “I am going to call a cab,” he said. “We are all going to get in it and go to the A&E. Thomas is going to get his stomach pumped. And I am going to give you both a very long and terrifying lecture about consequences and maturity.”

* * *

“Nobody is to use Mycroft’s private bath,” Sherlock said.

“Why would we?” Thomas asked.

Sherlock shrugged. “Irrelevant. But either, none of you are allowed to go in there in the future. Ivy and I are attempting to see how much mildew can be induced to grow there in the next week before he returns. If all goes well, we’ll have the walls _dripping_ with toxic mold.”

* * *

“Sherlock! OMG, you won’t believe this!” Laura tossed her bookbag down and shrugged off her jacket. “A girl in my class _presented_ today!”

“Really?” he arched an eyebrow. “You’re only in fifth grade.”

“I know! She was the first in our entire year to get her secondary gender! She’s a beta,” she said. “It’s so cool. And then Ms. Marshall spent a whole hour talking to us about puberty and stuff, which was gross, but whatever. But she said some people can tell what gender they’re going to present as before they even reach puberty, is that true?”

“It is,” he said. “Alpha females have it the easiest. Their outward genital structure differs from that of other-gendered females.”

“What does that mean?”

Thomas snorted. “They have dicks, Laura.” She scowled and punched him in the arm.

“For all other genders, however, children’s internal structures have to be examined. Obviously, omega males have an entire unexpected organ system. But a thorough examination can find biological differences between an alpha male and a beta male, or an omega female and a beta female. There are ways you can tell.”

“How come we’ve never been examined by doctors, then?” Laura asked, plopping down in an armchair and resting her chin on her hand. “I wanna know secondary gender I am.”

“Prepubescent determination is more of an upper class thing. I expect your parents either didn’t want to spare the expense or risk biasing their treatment of you. Or both.”

“…But our parents aren’t here right now,” Thomas said. “And Mycroft left you his credit card.”

Sherlock smiled. “Indeed he did.”

* * *

The five of them sat in a cramped doctor’s office, waiting for the test results to come back.

“How come Ivy didn’t get examined?” Charlie asked.

“I already know my secondary gender,” Ivy said.

“Really? What is it?”

“Alpha.”

“Oh,” Charlie said. “Cool.”

The doctor came back in, a stack of papers in his hands. “Well, Mr. Holmes, I have your results,” he said. “Laura Lillian Lestrade: beta. Thomas Walter Lestrade: omega. Charlotte-Marie Lestrade: alpha.”

Neither Laura nor Charlie were particularly surprised, though Charlie did squeal excitedly and hug her cousin.

Thomas’s face crumbled.


	7. Payment

Mycroft and Greg entered the house, looking chipper as ever, fresh from their honeymoon. Sherlock leapt out of his chair, as did all of the children. Greg was attacked in a vicious dog pile of affection. Mycroft got a single, equally-exuberant hug from Ivy.

And then they all started talking at once.

Greg held up his hands in surrender, laughing. “Whoa whoa whoa, slow your roll there. One at a time. You can all tell me how these past three weeks with Uncle Sherlock were, and then I can pass out your presents.”

“Presents?!”

“You bought us presents?!”

“Of course I brought you presents. Couldn’t very well go on holiday without bringing my kids back some souvenirs, could I?” He smiled again, and ruffled Charlie’s already-messy hair.

Greg dealt with his children while Mycroft gave Sherlock a significant look and they both stepped aside into the kitchen.

“I would like my payment now,” Sherlock said. “Standard fare for a child-minder is £20 per child per hour. Three kids for three weeks straight is £30,240. You owe me.”

“I am not giving you £30,000, Sherlock.”

“I _will_ sue.”

“I was under the impression that babysitting Greg and I’s children during our honeymoon was your wedding gift to us.”

“No. The speech was my wedding gift.”

“It was a terrible speech.”

“Too bad. £30,000, Mycroft, cough it up.”

“You already steal my money on a regular basis. You will never in your life get that much cash from me willingly.”

Sherlock pretended to consider it. “Alright,” he said. “What if you just owe me a favor instead?”

“No.”

“Don’t think I won’t take this to court. Services were rendered, services must be paid for.”

“We never had any form of contract.”

“I will blackmail you.”

“You’ve got nothing,” Mycroft said.

“No state secrets. Nothing that would affect your political career, true. But I’m sure Garrett would be _very_ interested to hear about that time we went to Aunt Sylvia’s house when you were eleven and you—”

“I recall the incident,” he said through gritted teeth. “What if I owe you half a favor?”

“How the hell do you owe someone half a favor?”

“It’s where I fulfill the terms of the favor exactly as you stated them but am completely unhelpful in any practical sense. I will be semantic and cross and purposely misconstrue what you meant. You’d almost be better off not having me owe you at all.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. “Deal.” He struck out his hand. They shook on it.

* * *

“Heyy! You’re back,” John said. “How were things at your cousins’ then?”

“It was great! Laura taught me how to swear in French.”

“Oh, that’s… Don’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because swearing is for grownups.”

“Why?”

“Uh, it just is.”

“That sounds arbitrary.”

“Pretty much, yeah. Still, though. It’s considered good manners.”

“Dad says good manners are pointless unless you’re manipulating someone.”

“Well, um, not to contradict your dad or anything, but in my experience, not really. It’s good to be nice to people. Just in general, and without any ulterior motive. Make yourself lots of friends that way.”

Ivy paused. “I don’t have any friends.”

“Not even at school?” John frowned.

“I don’t go to school.”

“You don’t—What do you mean, you don’t go to school? You’re seven, right? You should be in school by now.”

“I’m homeschooled.”

“Oh. Okay,” he said. “Do you like it? Being homeschooled?”

“No. I wanna go to a real school with real kids and maybe even have friends.”

“Wait. Real kids?”

She waved her hand dismissively.

“Ivy. Does your dad know this?”

She shook her head.

“Right, then. You should tell him.” John held out his hand to her. “Come on.”

* * *

Sherlock frowned deeply. “I was unaware of this.”

“Why?” Ivy asked.

“Because you never told me.”

“So? Why didn’t you deduce it?”

“I—am not a mind-reader,” he said. “Ivy, if you wanted to go to public school, all you had to do was ask. I can have you enrolled immediately.”

“Really?!”

“Yes, really. Of course, really,” he said, somewhat sharp, but without the accompanying eyeroll that anyone else would’ve gotten. “Now come on, let’s do something _interesting._ Have you checked on your mold growths yet?”

She grinned and shook her head, then bounded into the kitchen, the adults trailing after her. Ivy clamored up onto the counter and flung open two cupboards.

She frowned.

“John?” she asked quietly. “What happened to the berries that were in here?”

“Berries? Oh! Oh, those started growing mold, and they were out of their bags for some reason, so I binned them. You really should store fruit in the refrigerator, you know.”

Ivy looked heartbroken and Sherlock, about two seconds away from committing murder.

“Uh. Is there a problem?” John asked.

“You threw away Ivy’s mold growth experiment,” Sherlock said. “The berries were out of their bags because plastic might inhibit the mold. They were stored in the cupboard rather than the refrigerator to allow for quicker growth. There was a mini- _humidifier_ in there, John, how could you possibly think we intended that for eating?”

See, if it was just him and Sherlock living together, then John could explain that it was the perfectly normal, decent-person thing to do, throwing out moldy food he found in the kitchen. And he would be the sane one and Sherlock would be the unreasonable mad one for getting pissed.

But no. John lives with two Holmeses, and right now both of them are giving him death glares for unwittingly binning Ivy’s latest fungal experiment.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I—I had no idea. I’ve never lived in a flat where some of the food was specifically not for eating. It wasn’t labeled. I just assumed, I guess.”

“It was supposed to be three weeks rotted by now!” Ivy said. “I had raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, and grapes, and I was going to examine the differences in the molds they grew!”

“I’m very sorry, Ivy,” he repeated.

“Three weeks, John!”

“Hey. Hey,” he said. “How about we go down to Tesco’s and I buy you whole new berries? Huh? You can pick them out and everything. Tell me all about the decomposition process and what you expect from these molds. Does your experiment have a hypothesis?”

She scoffed. “Of course.”

“What is it, then?”

She scuffed a toe on the kitchen floor. “…The raspberry mold is going to be the coolest.”

“She has very specific criteria and parameters for determining coolness levels,” Sherlock said defensively, laying a hand on her shoulder. John nodded with the utmost seriousness.

“Alright then. Is there anything else you want to pick up from Tesco’s? Any treats or anything?”

“You owe me chocolate cake.”

“Chocolate cake it is then.”

Ivy went to put on her boots and coat, and John did the same. He took the little girl’s hand out the door, and looked back over his shoulder at Sherlock.

He winked.

* * *

“Sherlock Holmes!” Sebastian Wilkes said exuberantly, walking into his office. He stopped dead.

Sherlock was accompanied by a short blond alpha and a child who looked and smelled like him.

“Oh. I didn’t realize—”

“You never do. That’s why I’m here, remember?”

Sebastian smiled. “What’s the rush, buddy? Let’s catch up first. Come on. How long has it been, eight years since I last clapped eyes on you?” He looked pointedly at Ivy. “And I’m guessing your little one is what, seven?”

“This is my daughter, Ivy Holmes,” he said. “And my friend, John Watson.”

“Friend?”

“Colleague,” John corrected briskly.

“Right.” Sebastian shook his hand, visibly suppressing a laugh.

* * *

“John. This is very important. I need you to go flirt with Molly.”

“Why?”

“Because then she will be more easily persuaded into allowing me to examine the bodies. Especially if you are the one to ask.”

Ivy’s face had contorted into some cross between a confused frown and a glare.

John rubbed at his temple. “Oh? And what makes you think that?”

“It’s obvious she’s infatuated with you. All the evidence points to it. The first day you came to visit Bart’s, she left the laboratory to go apply lipstick shortly after you entered the building but before the two of you formally met. Why? She’s never done that before. Obviously, something had changed. Attempts to make herself more sexually appealing plus changed circumstances equals someone new. You.

“But that isn’t all. There was also the incident with the wedding. She was practically glued to your side throughout the entire ordeal. She sat next to you through the ceremony, through the reception, you even shared a few dances, if I recall. And then there was the way she dressed. I’ve seen Molly in formal wear before—hospital fundraisers and the like—and that was over-the-top, even for her. She’s trying embarrassingly hard. Why? She doesn’t know Mycroft, she’s only met Lestrade maybe once in passing. Conclusion: you. She knew she would be coming to my flat, where you lived, and dressed to impress. You see? It’s obvious.”

John gaped at him. “Sherlock, you bumbling idiot. It’s you. Molly has a crush on you. God knows why.”

“What? No, she doesn’t. Molly’s a friend.”

“Um,” Ivy said. “She does, actually. I… thought you liked her back. That, uh, that may have been the reason for those ‘changed circumstances’ you mentioned.”

“…But I’m gay.”

“Does Molly know that?” John asked.

Sherlock’s face lit up. “John, you’re brilliant. Of course she doesn’t have to know.”

He stalked over to her at the cafeteria buffet line, ignoring John and Ivy’s vehement protests, and began making inappropriate comments about roast pork and complimenting her hair.

* * *

John was on a date.

John was on a date with a pretty, smart, driven, _horrible_ beta woman named Sarah.

She was perfect for him, exactly what Sherlock had deduced John’s type to be. The alpha had no preference when it came to secondary gender, or at least, he had no compunctions about dating certain genders. Most of his past girlfriends had been betas, though there were a few alphas and only one omega. John didn’t like helplessness, he liked someone with a bit more grit, though at the same time, his alpha instincts were attracted to people who would allow him to protect and coddle them on occasion. Hence, an abundance of betas.

And worse, Sarah was a doctor, a successful, well-off, intelligent doctor. She was a bit of normal without being mundane, just like John. She was flirty and friendly and sickeningly perfect.

Sherlock, of course, would have to intercede.

It wasn’t that he was jealous. Far from it. He couldn’t care less. Just a day ago, he had been encouraging John to pursue Molly. Why would Sarah be any different? No, Sherlock wanted to keep John single for entirely different reasons. He was a semi-tolerable acquaintance, got along with Ivy, helped with cases, and paid half the rent. Sherlock was unlikely to find such an ideal flatmate ever again. Certainly not anytime in the near future.

Plus John had a gone and sometimes he shot cabbies for him and Sherlock was loathe to lose that.

So he suggested the distracting, case-related circus and then crashed John’s date.

“—No, I don’t think so, we only booked two,” John was saying.

“Then I phoned back and got one for myself as well,” Sherlock said, approaching. He didn’t take his eyes off Sarah, the John-stealing threat. He held out his hand. “I’m Sherlock.”

She hesitated before taking his hand, laughing a little. Why? “Hi.”

* * *

It was worse than Sherlock could have possibly anticipated.

A Chinese gangster tried to kill him at the circus and John rushed to his aid (of course), but so did Sarah, and it was her who dealt the finishing blow with a lead pipe to the head, and John looked at her with pride and fire in his eyes.

And now Sarah was the strong and worthy mate and was just that idiotic, helpless omega.

And, of course, Sarah had nerves of steel and didn’t scare easy and stuck out the date even after all that. She even helped with the case, which had been the one advantage Sherlock had over her.

* * *

Sebastian signed off the check. In Sherlock’s name, but given to John, which was rapidly on its way to becoming a trend. “He really climbed up onto the balcony?”

“Nail a plank across the window and all your problems are over,” John said.

“Hm.” He gave a wry smile. “So you and the freak. What’s the story there?”

“We’re just flatmates.”

“Really?” he asked. “Woulda thought you’d be hitting that. Man’s mad as a hatter, alright, but he is an omega. If you can shut him up for five minutes, it might even be worth it. And I bet he couldn’t say much if he was—”

John leaned forward across the desk and yanked Wilkes forward by his tie. “Listen to me,” he said lowly. “Not one more word is going to come out of your mouth, do you hear? Not one. More. Word. Or I swear to God, I will reach into your sorry excuse for a head and rip your tongue out. I don’t know what the hell you got away with in university. I don’t know why Sherlock lets you talk to him the way you do. But that’s not how things are gonna be from now on.”

He released the man’s tie, and Wilkes fell back in his chair, gasping, choking. John ripped the check off his desk.

“Stay the hell away from Sherlock Holmes.”


	8. Uni Stories

John walked downstairs the next morning to find Sherlock and Mycroft sitting in armchairs across from each other, both wearing designer suits and glaring silently.

“Ah, hello, Mycroft. Would you like some tea?”

“Don’t give him tea,” Sherlock snarled.

“Tea would be lovely. Thank you, Dr. Watson.”

John realized, belatedly, that he should probably stick to addressing him as Mr. Holmes. He went off to the kitchen to go make tea.

The Holmes brothers were still playing their eerily-quiet staring contest when he got back. Sherlock managed to make sipping tea look aggressive.

John had two options. He could, 1: leave, and mind his own business, or 2: stay and see if the brothers were capable of having an entire argument telepathically.

Naturally, he went with option 2.

Mycroft completely finished his tea before anyone spoke again. He set the teacup and saucer down delicately on the coffee table. “Gregory would like me to convey—”

“If Gordan has something to say, he can come over here and say it to me himself.”

Mycroft pursed his lips. “Having the children paint Charlotte-Marie’s room was a… good idea.”

He sounded physically pained. Sherlock’s expression didn’t outwardly change, but he looked like he might die of shock.

Mycroft continued. “Gregory is of the opinion that a townhouse styled entirely in shades of white and off-white is unwelcoming to children, though I did point out to him that it has occasional cream and beige tones to add a splash of color, and that modernistic minimalism is at the apex of interior design—”

“Your house looks like a psychiatric ward designed by Better Homes and Gardens,” Sherlock spat.

“You would know, wouldn’t you?” he asked, and Sherlock flinched, just the tiniest movement, barely noticeable. John’s hands curled into fists. Every muscle in his body tensed in anticipation.

“I apologize,” Mycroft said. “That was out of turn. I came here to convey my mate’s gratitude. The painting project both served as an educational opportunity and allowed the children to personalize the townhouse and thus created a sense of ownership and familiarity, which greatly helped with the transition. Thank you.”

Sherlock did not react in the slightest. He could have been carved out of marble.

“That said,” Mycroft continued. “Those are my mate’s sentiments and not my own. In my assessment, you are an unfit guardian and will not be called upon again. You trashed my house, let the children paint and color on the walls, grew mildew in the bathroom, disposed of the entire concept of bedtimes, and allowed my children to subsist almost entirely on candy and junk food for three weeks.”

“Your stepchildren,” Sherlock corrected quietly. “You haven’t adopted them.”

“Not to mention the debacle of Laura’s foray into babysitting. And don’t think I’m unaware that you had them tested to determine their future secondary genders, despite the fact that even a child could have deduced that that was undesired.”

“The children expressly did desire it, if I recall.”

“And yet their parents did not. Legal guardians have final say on all issues of medical consent for those within their care. You acted outside of your purview.”

“Forgive me for giving them a bit of autonomy in their own lives.”

“You caused Thomas distress. He is only nine. He was not yet ready to handle such adult implications.”

“Oh? So would you rather he have been blindsided by it? He is statistically most likely to present during school hours. I guarantee you it would be far more distressing to have that thrust upon him unexpectedly in a public setting. I gave him time to process and prepare. I’m sparing him future public humiliation.”

“It doesn’t always go that way.”

“Not always, but often. Best be prepared regardless. Surely even you cannot protest that?” he said. “Unless this is about something else. Tell me, Mycroft, are you ashamed that the only son you’ll ever have turned out to be an omega?”

“You know that is not true.”

“Do I?”

Mycroft clenched his jaw and breathed heavily through his nose. “I am not having this discussion with you again,” he said. “You—”

“Good! Now we can move on to other matters,” Sherlock said. “I want Ivy to be enrolled in public school, and I want her to be placed in the same first-grade class as Charlie. Arrange that for me, would you?”

Mycroft quirked an eyebrow. “Calling in your half-favor so soon, brother dear?”

“No, of course not. You’re going to do this for me out of the kindness of your heart, and with no expectations of returns.”

“Oh? And why would I do that?”

“Gilligan has invited me to your horrific torture mansion for Sunday dinner with your family. The topic will naturally come up then. There are two ways that could play out. In the first, you refuse me this kindness, and Charlie cries at the dinner table, Thomas and Laura are snippy for an entire week, and Grant banishes you from your own bedroom until several arguments are endured. In the second, you announce proudly what you have done for Ivy and Charlie, receive many hugs and thank-yous, Gaston is generally pleased, and you are stepdad of the year.”

“Not abusing my power for personal reasons hardly makes me a villain, Sherlock. Other parents have no such opportunities and get along perfectly well. Ivy will end up in the class she ends up in, and that is that.”

“That’s certainly not the way I’m going to explain it to your stepchildren, though. I’m sure they’d all love to hear how you’ll abuse your power for anyone and anything, except for them, because their happiness isn’t worth it.”

Mycroft pursed his lips again. He seemed to do that a lot.

“Fine,” he said, standing. “I will see you for Sunday dinner. Do try to follow the law in the interim. I would so hate to see you arrested again. It bodes ill for my reputation, you see.”

“Oh, I’m sure.” Sherlock stood. “Wouldn’t want you to lose the next election due to a scandal I caused. Oh, wait. Your mysterious position is an appointed one, not an elected one, isn’t it?”

“Do tell me what led to _that_ deduction.”

“I am not so ignorant of the state of the world as you think, brother dear,” he said. “I went to vote against you one year. Read through the entire ballot, your name wasn’t on there once.”

Mycroft grimaced. He slipped on his coat and picked up his umbrella. It was a perfectly sunny day out. “Good day, Sherlock. Dr. Watson. Give Ivy my best when she wakes.”

The door _snicked_ closed behind him.

“Dear God,” John said. “Is he always like that?”

“Yes,” Sherlock said. “Unfortunately. He was born looking down his nose at the world, you know.”

John snorted. “I’m picturing him as a four-year-old in a three-piece suit.”

Sherlock smiled. “He was, you know. Our parents were horrifically pretentious like that.”

“God, really? Don’t tell me you had to dress like that too, did you?” Sherlock nodded, and John gasped, full of playful mocking. “Oh God! That’s why you dress the way you do! You feel uncomfortable in anything other than a suit, but the unbuttoned collar, the lack of a tie—that’s your bloody teenage rebellion, isn’t it?”

He rolled his eyes. “I am hardly a teenager at this stage in life, John. And I’ll have you know I was perfectly well-behaved as a teenager.”

“Oh, I’m sure. So when did it hit, then? Twenty, twenty-one? Had to be sometime while you were in uni.”

“Twenty-two, actually. My first year of graduate school. I had just gotten my bachelor’s in chemistry and I thought I was invincible.”

“Ah, to have the misplaced confidence of a uni student again,” John said wistfully.

“I suppose you were the same?”

“I was an adrenaline junkie through and through. I’d already done the sneaking out late for girls and parties thing in high school, but it kicked up a notch in uni. I must have come this close to losing my scholarship and never even realized. God, I was an idiot.”

Sherlock snorted. “Hardly. Despite the abundance of distractions provided by the first real taste of freedom in your life and the prolonged stress of your situation at home, you were quite clearly able to maintain high enough grades to fulfill the scholarship requirements, which shows both an underlying dedication and a natural aptitude, as one without the other would not have been enough to prevent you from flunking out under those circumstances.” He tilted his head and scanned over John’s body. “You played a sport as well, didn’t you? What was it? Football?”

“Rugby,” he said. “I barely had time to breathe, to be honest. Don’t know when I slept.”

“You don’t need sleep.”

“You do, actually. Pretty sure on that one,” he said. “And anyway, I did end up losing that scholarship.”

“That’s why you joined the military. You found yourself a young adult with an abundance of debt and no way of paying it. Then an army recruiter swooped in and offered a solution.”

He nodded. “Spot on,” he said. “Alright. Fair’s fair. Your turn now.”

“My turn for what?”

“Your uni story. Obviously, Mr. Consulting Detective. There has to be one. You walked away with a daughter at the end of it.”

“Ah,” he said. “More tea first. Then I’ll tell you my story.”

* * *

They were sat down at the kitchen table, cups of steaming tea in front of them. Sherlock held his in his hands to warm them, but didn’t seem too keen on actually drinking it.

“I got into drugs,” he said. “It just sort of happened. I was bored, and… alone. The drugs made it not matter. Cleared my mind, pushed all those thoughts away. I actually thought it made me smarter. More focused, to have my head a bit emptier like that. So I started using more and more.

“I was twenty-five when it got out of control. I started missing classes. Burning through my trust fund allowance as soon as I got it. Nothing mattered but the cocaine. Not school, not food, not… heat suppressants.

“It was an accident, really. My roommate was a man named Victor Trevor. He was an omega too. I suppose he was the closest thing I’d ever had to a friend up to that point. We mostly shot up together. Sometimes I’d do his homework for cash, and sometimes we’d have sex.

“Then I went into heat unexpectedly. Victor was an omega, he wasn’t affected by it. But we were both extremely high at the time. I don’t even remember the first twenty-four hours.” He shrugged. “We were high, I was in heat, he was there. Not exactly the love story of the ages.

“Mycroft came to visit the next week. He found me strung out, half-starved, dehydrated, and failing all my classes. He carted me off to a private rehab facility immediately. My scent started changing two weeks later.

“Going back to school afterwards was impractical. My family didn’t trust me to be able to handle it. Frankly, neither did I. So I settled down with Ivy instead and started solving crimes.”

“And Victor?” John asked.

Sherlock shook his head. “He doesn’t know a thing. Never saw him again after that heat. He likely assumes I dropped out and ended up on the streets. Mycroft deduced that he was Ivy’s other father, of course, but I made him swear not to interfere.”

John swallowed. He wanted nothing more than to take Sherlock’s hand in his own and comfort him, but it wasn’t his place. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean to make you talk about anything that would make you uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t.” Sherlock shook his head. “Believe me. There isn’t a person on this Earth that can force me to do a thing I don’t want to do.”

* * *

Due to Holmes and Lestrade being close together alphabetically, Ivy and Charlie ended up sitting just one seat apart, separated by a girl named Danielle Jareau.

“Ivyyy!” Charlie squealed, waving her arms wildly and gesturing to her seat. “Come here! Danielle, this is my cousin, Ivy. Ivy, this is my bestest friend ever, Danielle.”

“Hi,” Ivy said shyly. Danielle smiled and gave a small wave.

Charlie scooched her chair over until it was pulled up to Danielle’s desk rather than her own, and then flopped herself over it. Danielle merely giggled and rested her elbows on Charlie’s back, amused.

“Okay,” Charlie said. “So here is what you need to know.”

* * *

Ivy raised her hand. “Do I have to do this? I already know how to add.”

“Yes, you have to do it,” the teacher said.

“But why?”

“Because I said so and the whole class is doing it.”

“That’s stupid.”

The teacher glared at her sharply. “We do not call things stupid.”

“Why?”

“It’s rude and disrespectful. Now do your work.”

“But my dad calls things stupid all the time.”

“Ivy—”

“I don’t wanna do addition,” she said. “I shouldn’t have to go over stupid basic stuff that I already learned and is stupid just because everyone else here is stupid too.”

“Ivy! That is enough! One more word and you will be sent to the principal’s office!”

She glared. She snatched up her pencil and raced through the basic, stupid computations.

* * *

The children swarmed out onto the playground in a seething, shrieking mob. Charlie pulled Ivy and Danielle along by their wrists.

“Come on!” she shouted. “What do we want to play?”

“How about four square?” Danielle suggested.

“We played four square yesterday,” Charlie said.

“Tetherball?”

“There’ll be a line. And Jack and Michael are there,” she said, with obvious distaste. “We could swing?”

Danielle rolled her eyes. “Booooring,” she said. “How about we play castle? We can all be sister queens who rule the world.”

“Ooh! And we have kittens!”

“Yes! Rainbow kittens who read minds!”

“And can turn invisible!”

They ran off to the play fort, sussing out more details as they went. Ivy followed behind, just a touch slower. She didn’t really know how to play pretend, had never done it before. It sounded purposeless and childish and boring.

But ten minutes later, she had unlocked her lava powers, poisoned Daniellisia, Queen of the Jungle, and was on her way to the final showdown with Lucas the Ice King. Her hairbow was the source of her power, worth untold riches, and changed color based on her mood. At some point it was decided that whoever possessed it at the moment was Grand High Ruler of the Universe (And Rainbows). It changed hands ten times between four people. Ivy got it back in the end.

So maybe it was okay.


	9. An Argument

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was not what I meant to write for this chapter AT ALL. It was supposed to be a case? I'll write a case for the next chapter (hopefully)

“Do you have any homework?” Sherlock asked. Ivy’s backpack was laying on the kitchen table. Apparently she was the only child in school whose tote was designer handsewn leather. Everyone else had overly-sequined affairs with superheroes and cartoon characters printed on them.

She unbuttoned the bag and pulled out her homework folder. It contained a thin children’s book, a worksheet, and a reading chart.

“I’m supposed to read this book for fifteen minutes,” she said. “But it won’t take me fifteen minutes. And then you have to sign this paper saying that I read. Also, I need to do this paper. It’s on reading analogue clocks.”

“Sounds dull,” Sherlock said. Ivy’s lips quirked.

He picked up the book. “’If You Give A Mouse A Cookie’? You shouldn’t give mice cookies. It encourages mice,” he said. “And should something so obviously riddled with Americanisms really be included in any proper school curriculum? Certainly there are better books available without teachers having to resort to this rubbish?”

Ivy nodded fervently. “Do I have to read it?” she asked. “Because you can just sign the paper. Without me reading it. I wouldn’t tell anybody.”

Sherlock paused. He flipped through the book briefly. It was even worse than he had expected.

“Well,” he said. “How about you read something else for fifteen minutes? Something that won’t rot your brain, preferably.”

“And the worksheet?”

“You do have to do that, unfortunately. Failure to complete your homework could negatively impact your grades.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Yes. Worst case scenario, you could end up being held back rather than skipping grades, as I expect your teacher will recommend sometime soon.”

Ivy looked down at the worksheet. “But it’s so useless. Why would I ever need to read analogue? Everyone uses digital nowadays.”

“Not everyone. There is a direct correlation between someone’s pretentiousness and their likelihood of using an analogue clock; I did a study. For instance, just last week I had a run-in with Sebastian Wilkes. Absolute pompous arse, far too wealthy for his own good, and high on his delusions of power. I was able to tell that he had crossed the international dateline twice this month by a quick glance at his watch. His _analogue_ watch.”

Ivy glared. “You swore.”

“What?”

“You swore,” she said. “You called him a pompous arse.”

“So? It’s accurate; I don’t see the problem.”

“John says swearing is wrong.” She folded her arms. “That it’s rude and mean and doesn’t make you any friends, and children shouldn’t have anything to do with it.”

“John said all that?”

“Uh-huh.”

Sherlock frowned. “John!” he called loudly. “Did you tell Ivy not to swear?”

A door opened. Footsteps pounded down the stairs. “Yeah? What’d you say?”

“Did you tell Ivy not to swear?”

“Well… yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because… children shouldn’t swear?”

“She is not your child, though. She is not under your authority.”

“Yeah, I know, but isn’t that sort of a universal thing? A kid swears, an adult corrects them? I’m sure her teacher would have done the same. Mrs. Hudson, Greg and Mycroft, any random teenage babysitter you brought in—it’s not exactly unusual.”

“I will not have you undermining my authority as a parent.”

John’s face darkened. “Don’t you think we should be having this conversation in private?”

“Ivy stays.” Sherlock put a hand on her shoulder. “She should be aware of the situation through an unbiased lens.”

“Oh? And what is the situation then?”

“You think that just because you’re an alpha and you live with us, then that makes you our pack alpha.”

“That is not at all what is going on—”

“Really? Then what is going on, John?”

“You are being a massive drama queen, for one thing, and making mountains out of molehills. All I did was tell her not to swear. It’s not like I’m dictating where she goes or who she hangs out with. All I’ve ever done with Ivy is teach her how to make eggs and tell her not to swear.”

“And throw out my mold,” Ivy said.

“And you threw out her mold!” Sherlock made it sound like a grave offense.

“Oh, will you two both _shut up_ about the bloody mold! I didn’t know it was important! I said I was sorry, I bought you new berries, what more do you want?! You make it sound like I’m some tyrannical alpha dictator around here, when really, you’re both just scared because you’ve never been around one before!”

“You’re taking liberties!” Sherlock shouted. “You’re here to pay the rent and stay out of our way, _Dr._ Watson. Frankly, you aren’t even a proper colleague.”

“Is that what this is about?” John asked, incredulous. “You’re pissed because I didn’t tell Wilkes you were my best buddy ever?”

Ivy stamped her foot. “Shut up!” she shouted. She glared fire at them both. She let out a huffy growl and threw her bookbag over one shoulder, then turned on her heel and stormed out.

“Ivy!” Sherlock called, when she was halfway down the stairs. “Ivy, where are you going?”

“Scotland Yard!”

* * *

Ivy Holmes was not an unfamiliar face at the Yard. So when she went in and spoke with the receptionist (elderly, omega, grandchildren Ivy’s age), she was immediately allowed in to see her Uncle Greg.

His entire team was in there with him: Donovan, Hopkins, O’Malley, and Anderson. Donovan was talking, pinning a string over the evidence board, connecting pictures of victims to one of Anderson’s forensics analyses.

Everything stopped when she walked in.

“Uncle Greg,” she croaked, her voice small. She held out her arms, and the older detective melted, immediately scooping her up in a hug, murmuring reassurances and whisking her out of the room.

* * *

“Well, that went well,” John said.

Sherlock shot him a sharp look. “It’s hardly my fault.”

“Oh, no, that’s right, everything ever is my fault, isn’t it? Because I’m an alpha brute trying to shove my way into your family.”

“You can hardly blame me for being cautious.”

“There’s cautious and then there’s this.” He laughed. “Sherlock, I told your kid that swearing generally isn’t socially acceptable, once, a week ago, and you damn near ripped my head off.”

Sherlock looked at him. He tipped his head backwards. “God.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve—It’s been—”

“I get it, it’s just—”

“No, no, you don’t,” he said. “We’ve had a stressful week, yes, but it’s not just… I never expected a child.”

John stared at him. “You don’t have to tell me this.”

“I do. You live here, and it’s affecting your life now,” he said. He took a breath. “I never expected a child. And then I got pregnant, entirely by accident.”

“I was wondering about that,” John said. “At your brother’s wedding, you made quite the speech about abortion. Then I find out that you got pregnant while single, unbonded, in uni and trying to kick a drug addiction… It doesn’t fit. Why did you decide to keep it?”

“Being pro-choice doesn’t mean being anti-children,” he said. “It’s just that: your right to _choose._ Do you know what happens when a pro-life supporter gets accidentally knocked up and decides to keep the baby? They tell them. They tell their child. They look their child in the eyes and tell them they’re one of their regrets, that they ruined their life, that they wish they had never been born.”

John was silent.

“A pro-choice parent has a child because they want to. A pro-life parent has a child because it’s a sin not to. They feel that they’re trapped and without options. And maybe it isn’t immediate, or even conscious, but they’ll blame that child eventually. And it’s just… It’s better for everyone involved, really, if the option of abortion is there.” He shrugged. “No one’s forcing you to do anything with it, though.”

“That still doesn’t answer the question,” John said. “Why did you decide to keep Ivy?”

He laughed. “It’s pathetic.”

“I won’t laugh. Promise.”

Sherlock quieted. He looked up at John’s eyes carefully. After a moment, he gave a barely perceptible nod. “Alright. You won’t,” he said, voice soft. “…I was alone. I had no friends. None. Which is all well and good to deal with for a year or two as a child, but a decade or two leaves a bit of a dent on the psyche. I was in a rehab facility, surrounded by other addicts, who all felt varying degrees of animosity towards me. Even my parents weren’t speaking to me. Mycroft would stop by to visit once a month. He would make comments about how badly I’d fucked everything up, talk about our parents, uni, his oh-so-important job and how successful he was—the general nine yards of guilt-tripping and passive-aggression. The only people who were moderately kind to me were the staff there, and they were paid to be. They put up with me out of pure obligation, and kept contact as minimal as possible.”

“And you thought a child would love you,” John said quietly.

Sherlock nodded. “Bit manipulative, in hindsight. And more than just a little bit pathetic.”

“I don’t think that’s manipulative.”

“You don’t?”

“You wanted unconditional love and affection, and so you offered it to someone in return.”

“Put that way, it sounds like a monetary exchange.”

John shrugged. “All relationships have an aspect of give and take to them. You love her, she loves you, and that’s that. Seems like a perfectly normal parent-child relationship to me. The only part that’s off about it is that every adult you’ve met in life has turned out to be an absolute shitbag, so you think only someone who’s been desensitized to you from birth could ever love you.”

“I told you it was pathetic.”

“I’m not calling you pathetic. I’m thinking I shoulda punched Wilkes. And maybe Mycroft, next time I see him.”

Sherlock smiled grimly. “Do you get it, now? Why I reacted so strongly?” he asked. “Ivy… Ivy is my world. Which is horribly cliché, of course, and something every parent says, but it’s true. I never expected to be a parent, and then suddenly I was, and I had absolutely no clue what I was doing. I’ve always been scared of screwing it up, and then you walk into my life, this successful, well-adjusted alpha, and you cook and tell Ivy to eat and not swear and—” He breathed deeply.

“Hey,” John said gently. He moved over to Sherlock and slid an arm around his shoulders, giving him a half-hug. “Hey, it’s alright. Every parent gets insecure now and then. I’m not trying to take over, I swear, or undermine your authority or anything.”

“I know. I know,” he said. “I’m sorry I overreacted.”

“It’s fine.” He firmly repressed an urge to press a kiss into Sherlock’s curls. “Let’s go find your daughter now, yeah?”

* * *

Ivy was sitting on Donovan’s lap, eating candy from the jar on Uncle Greg’s desk, and telling her all about her day at school. Uncle Greg had spent about fifteen minutes talking to her about what had happened and calming her down, then brought her back into his office. The team was decidedly not working anymore.

Hopkins had gone down to the floor below and brought Ivy back a teddy bear dressed as a police officer. Scotland Yard gave them out to any kids who came down to the station, which was sadly usually for domestic complaints.

Ivy named her Constable Mycena.

She was just relating how incredibly dull the entire English learning curriculum was (much to Lestrade’s team’s amusement) when her dad and John walked in.

“Dad!” she said. “Constable Hopkins gave me a teddy bear! Look!”

“I see,” he said, smiling.

“You’re not looking enough.”

Sherlock picked up the bear and inspected it thoroughly, devoting it the sort of concentration he only gave especially puzzling cases. “Made in a Taiwanese sweatshop,” he said. “Outfit is a polyester-cotton blend, though the actual skin of the bear is a synthetic plush blend. You’ve decided the bear is… female, and she has been being held up by the left arm within the last ten minutes. Likely by Hopkins, as you would never hold a bear in such a way. Due to the bear’s occupation as a police officer, you’ve decided to give her both a title as well as a name. The name, of course, is a genus of fungi.”

“Guess!”

Sherlock squinted at the bear. Held it up to the light. Looked around the room at the other detectives.

“Inspe—No. Constable Amanita.”

“That’s _dull_ , Dad.”

“Constable Ganoderma.”

Ivy rolled her eyes. “It’s Constable Mycena.”

“Gosh, Holmes, and you call yourself a detective,” Donovan said, shaking her head. Ivy grinned and hopped off her lap. She tucked Constable Mycena firmly against her side and used her other hand to take hold of her dad’s. John murmured a quick thank-you to the officers as they headed out the door.

Ivy looked up at Sherlock, green eyes bright but worried. “Are things okay now?”

“Yes. I apologized and things are okay now. I’m sorry that happened.” He leaned down to kiss the top of her head.

“Good,” she said. “Just, next time, remember you aren’t allowed to swear.”


	10. The Case of the Kidnapped Spider

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> based on a dubiously real case that I heard about on the internet somewhere

Sherlock’s phone rang.

He stalwartly ignored it and let it ring out.

It rang again immediately after. He gave it a bored glance.

“Aren’t you going to get that?” John asked.

“Anyone who knows me knows to text, and I don’t take phone calls from clients.”

“Why not?”

“If they waste my time, it’s harder to charge them for it.”

“Ah,” he said. “So then why list your phone number on your site at all?”

“So that I don’t have to give it out to the actually interesting clients. I can just tell them it’s on the site and to look it up themselves, text me if there’s an emergency.”

John frowned. “Wait. Do you not know your own phone number?”

His phone stopped ringing.

Sherlock shrugged. “Why bother? I never have to use it myself.”

“Yeah, but Sherlock, it’s your own phone number. You’ve got an amazing memory, and this is, you know, kind of important.”

“Not really.”

John opened his mouth to speak, and then _his_ phone rang. He answered it immediately. “Hello?... Yes, this is he… Yep. Arse is sitting right in front of me.” He held the phone out. “It’s for you.”

Sherlock sighed deeply and held the phone up to his ear. “What?”

Donovan’s shrill voice greeted him. “Hello, Freak. You own a phone. Did you know that?”

“Of course I know that.”

“Uh-huh. Then why aren’t you answering it, you bloody arsehole?”

“Because I didn’t _feel_ like it,” he snapped. “Now what could have possibly happened that is so dreadfully important?”

“It’s a case.”

He sat up. _“You_ want me on a case?” he asked. “Why isn’t Lestrade calling?”

“Lestrade is fucking dealing with shit right now.”

“What sort of case is it?”

“It’s… Look, just get down to the station, will you? I promise it’s weird enough for you. That’s why I’m calling you in, really. Case like this requires a special kind of crazy.”

He hung up.

“Case, John! Wanna come?”

He grinned. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

* * *

Lestrade’s office contained him, his team, and a distraught uni student sobbing into his shoulder. Lestrade looked ready to gouge his eyes out.

“There, there,” he said, rubbing the student’s back in circles. “It’ll be alright. We’ll get Geoffrey back, safe and sound for you. Look, there’s Sherlock Holmes. He’s one of our finest consultants.”

“’One of’?” Sherlock asked, miffed.

“Yeah, well we also got this young hacker girl who lives out of her van and is a hell of a lot nicer than you. Lizzy Klekamp?” Lestrade said.

“Oi yeah, I like Lizzy,” O’Malley said. “She’s a good kid. We always take her out after she helps us with a case, even if it doesn’t actually solve anything. Kid doesn’t eat enough, you know? Bad family.”

“Not that you’re a _bad_ consultant,” Hopkins said. “It’s just… Well, we _like_ Lizzy.”

Sherlock scoffed and turned up his coat collar, pulling it high against his face. “Whatever. You, victim, what’s your name?”

The young man sniffled. “I am not the victim here,” he said, voice wobbling. “My son, Geoffrey, who is the most pure and innocent of souls, _he’s_ the victim!”

“Geoffrey is a tarantula,” Lestrade said quietly.

“He’s my son!” the uni student wailed.

“Hey, hey. It’s alright,” John said soothingly. “What’s your name?”

“A-Albert Knightsbridge.”

“Alright, Albert. That’s good. Thank you for cooperating with us. Now, can you tell us what happened to Geoffrey?”

“He was kidnapped!” Albert burst into sobs once again.

“Are you sure you didn’t just lose him?” O’Malley asked.

“Of course I’m sure! You think I would come to the police if I wasn’t sure?! That douchebag Randy stole him from me!”

“Maybe he ran away,” Sherlock muttered. Albert sobbed louder.

“What makes you think this Randy character stole your tarantula?” Lestrade asked.

“His name is Geoffrey!”

Lestrade put his hands up. “Sorry. Sorry. What makes you think Randy kidnapped Geoffrey?”

“I-I was going on vacation for a while, yeah? So I called up Randy and asked him to spider-sit Geoffrey for a bit, ‘cause he’s my best mate and he knows how much Geoffrey means to me. But then I got back and Randy tells me he likes Geoffrey now and he’s going to keep him for good. I say no, that’s my spider, give him back. Randy says, ‘give me 200 quid first.’ I ain’t got 200 quid. I’m in bloody uni. So’s I call the police, but the police just laughed at me!”

“What happened next?” John prodded.

“Randy upped his demands to 500 quid. I called the police again, and I learned from the last time, you see, this time I reported it in as a theft rather than a kidnapping and they took me seriously. But see, they’re saying it’ll take a few days to get a search warrant, and even when they do, Randy could just leave with Geoffrey.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “This is a very straightforward case. The only reason you haven’t resolved it yet because you insist on treating a kidnapping as a theft, merely because Geoffrey is technically Albert’s legal property.”

“Thank you!” Albert cried.

“Alright,” Lestrade said. “So we treat it like a kidnapping.”

* * *

Things did not go well, or at all how anyone had expected them to. Randy had rapidly escalated the situation.

“Police! We have you surrounded!” Lestrade shouted into a bullhorn. His team was closing in on Randy’s rundown, crapass student housing. The entire street was closed off. Three cop cars were parked haphazardly in front of the house.

“Randolph Miller, come out with your hands up!” he continued.

“Can we get some air support?” O’Malley asked.

“Why? We don’t need air support,” Lestrade said.

“Yeah, but it’d be super cool, and it’d scare the living daylights out of him.”

Albert’s phone rang.

He answered it with trembling fingers. “Hello?”

“It’s me,” a dark voice said over speaker phone. Sherlock rolled his eyes.

“I’ve raised my demands,” Randy said, trying desperately hard to sound threatening.

“But I didn’t have the money to start with!”

“You’ll find it… if you ever want to see Geoffrey alive again.”

Albert cried.

“If you don’t give me _3000 quid_ within one hour…” He paused dramatically. “I’ll shoot Geoffrey. _With a gun!”_

Albert wailed. He buried his face in Lestrade’s shoulder and clung to him, weeping. The older man grimaced.

“Please, I’m so broke. Please don’t do this to me. I love Geoffrey, just give him back. _Please.”_

“Bollocks to this,” John said. “Lestrade, can I borrow your gun?”

“No!” he said, clamping a hand over it protectively.

John rolled his eyes. “I’m not gonna go on some sort of killing spree. I was a soldier, army medic. Served two tours in Afghanistan. I know how to do a live extraction.”

“I’m still not giving you my gun.”

Albert sniffled, and looked up at him.

John set his jaw. “I’m gonna get that spider out of there.”

* * *

John planned and executed a flawless three-man extraction with himself, Sherlock, and Sergeant Donovan.

But now they were all standing in the kitchen, facing Randy. Randy was holding Geoffrey in one hand and a gun in the other. The gun was pointed at the hand holding the spider.

“I’ll do it,” he said. The gun was shaking. “I’ll do it, I swear. Don’t think I won’t do it.”

“Randy,” John said. “If you fire that gun, you will blow your own hand off.”

“I don’t care.”

“You could die,” he continued. “Those are some pretty important veins and arteries in that wrist there. And even if you lived, you don’t wanna lose your hand to _not_ get 3000 quid.”

“What?” he asked, genuinely confused.

“If you kill Geoffrey, then you lose your bargaining tool,” Sherlock explained. “Albert will have no reason to pay you. You need Geoffrey alive.”

Randy looked at the spider in awe.

“Randy, are you high?” Sherlock asked.

He looked up at him, his awe turning to fear. “Don’t tell the cops,” he stage-whispered, tilting his head toward Donovan.

“I won’t,” Sherlock swore. “But you need to put the gun down, okay? Can you put the gun down?”

Randy stared at the gun. He poked Geoffrey with it, and Geoffrey woke up, legs twitching and stretching. He started crawling up Randy’s arm.

Randy was about two seconds from pissing his pants.

_“There’s a spider on me.”_

“Randy, do not shoot the spider,” John said quickly.

“We will do it for you. Just hand us the gun, Randy.” Sherlock stretched out his hand, stepping forward cautiously. “Give us the gun.”

He pointed it straight at Sherlock, and Donovan’s weapon came up instantly. Randy’s eyes widened, and he whirled around to point the gun at her, and—

_Bang!_

“My leg!”

* * *

“I need so many drinks,” Donovan said. Anderson smirked and slipped his hand in hers.

Lestrade huffed. “So do I.”

“We can make a night of it,” O’Malley said. “All of us.”

“Alright, sounds great,” Donovan said. “Hey Freak, you and your boyfriend wanna come too?”

“Not his boyfriend,” John said.

“I have to pick up Ivy from school in an hour,” Sherlock said.

“Aw, get Mrs. Hudson to do it. Come on, Sherlock, you never go out with us,” Lestrade said.

John nudged him. “Come on.”

Sherlock looked at him, and John made a face. He sighed. “Ugh. Fine. But just this once.”

* * *

“Isn’t it a bit early in the day for this sort of thing?” Sherlock whined. Anderson rolled his eyes.

“Come on, guys, the Freak clearly doesn’t want to be here. He’s just gonna complain and insult us the entire time. Why’d you have to invite him anyhow?”

Donovan shrugged. “Who else is going to tell me how things are going with you and your wife? Come on. Let’s grab a table.”

Soon they were all seated around a fairly large table, pints of beer in front of them. And then Hopkins, young and exuberant as he was, suggested playing Never Have I Ever. O’Malley immediately chimed in excited agreement, and the two of them somehow pressganged the entire table into joining, with much protests and groaning.

“Alright, I’ll go first, since it was my idea,” Hopkins said. “Never have I ever… called a teacher ‘mum’.”

Lestrade guffawed a laugh, and John, Anderson, O’Malley, and Hopkins drank.

“Oh, I got a good one for ya,” Lestrade said, still grinning wildly. “Never have I ever called me, Gregory Lestrade, ‘dad’.”

John laughed. “No. You’re kidding.”

Sherlock, Donovan, and—again—O’Malley drank.

Greg leaned back in his seat, pleased with himself. “That’s right. I am all of your fathers. Do your homework and eat your veggies, kiddos. I run a preschool.”

Anderson snorted. “Never have I ever played on a sports team.”

“How very original,” Sherlock said dryly, as literally everyone else at the table (except Hopkins) drank.

“Oh yeah? Your turn, Freak. Let’s hear your oh-so-original question.”

“Never have I ever cheated on someone.”

Anderson met Sherlock’s gaze steadily and took a drink.

“Um. Sally?” O’Malley said.

“I’m not the one cheating, he is. I’m not drinking to that.” She shook her head.

John cleared his throat. “Never have I ever had sex with a woman.”

He, Lestrade, Anderson, O’Malley, and Donovan drank. Anderson slammed his glass down on the table in shock, eyebrows at his hairline.

“What?” Donovan snapped.

“You never told me you were a—”

“Finish that sentence, I dare you.”

Anderson snapped his mouth shut.

O’Malley looked between them hesitantly, then seemed to mentally shrug. “Never have I ever had sex with a man.”

The entire group except Anderson and Hopkins drank. Anderson swiveled over to face Sherlock.

“Really? Would’ve pegged you for a virgin, Freak.”

Sherlock stared at him. “I have a daughter,” he said. “Oh! But how could I have forgotten! Obviously, Ivy is the direct result of immaculate conception. She is, in fact, the second coming of the Christ. The angel Gabriel appeared before me in—”

“Yeah, yeah, we get it,” he snapped. “I forgot about the daughter, alright?”

“Honestly, how did you even get your job? What is it, nepotism? Are you threatening the chief superintendent somehow? Should I—?”

“Alright, that’s enough,” Lestrade said. “Let’s keep it civil. It’s Sally’s turn.”

“Never have I ever pissed my pants when I was eight at a school play.”

Anderson shot his girlfriend a look and took a drink.

“Never have I ever been scared of heights,” Hopkins said. He, Lestrade, and Sherlock drank.

“Never have I ever ridden a bicycle,” Lestrade said amiably, and everyone drank.

Anderson looked Sherlock dead in the eye. “Never have I ever gotten aroused at a crime scene.”

Sherlock firmly kept his arms where they were. “My life’s work is not a fetish.”

“Oh really? Coulda fooled—”

Sally took a drink. The entire table stared at her in shock.

“Sally?” Anderson squeaked.

“You have to drink too,” she said. “Remember? That time we snuck off to the—”

Anderson waved his hand frantically to cut her off and took a drink, face burning.

Sherlock glanced around the table. John had said he had slept with men, earlier, and Sherlock had nearly missed it entirely thanks to Anderson’s distracting level of idiocy. It was a deduction he had not arrived at. Somehow, he had missed that entirely in his conclusions about John’s sexual preferences, even though in hindsight, it was perfectly logical for him to have experimented while in uni or the army, or both.

It was one thing to experiment. It was another to gain positive conclusive results.

“Never have I ever been bisexual,” he said.

Lestrade, Donovan, and John drank.

“Does pansexual count?” O’Malley asked. Sherlock nodded, and she drank too.

Anderson looked around at his coworkers with wide eyes.

“Never have I ever done something illegal,” John said.

“That’s not fair, we’re all cops,” O’Malley said.

“That’s exactly why I’m asking.”

After much grumbling, everyone but John and Hopkins drank.

“Mine shouldn’t count,” Anderson said. “All I did was sneak into the girls’ locker room as a kid. Everyone does that.”

“No, budding young perverts do that,” Sherlock said.

“Oh, like you’re so squeaky clean. You’ve got a record a mile long. It’s the reason you’ll never be a _real_ cop—”

Lestrade cleared his throat. “Emma? It’s your turn.”

O’Malley flicked a lock of ginger hair over her shoulder. “Never have I ever used my handcuffs for something over than apprehending a criminal.”

There was a tense moment of awkward silence.

Donovan, Anderson, and Sherlock drank.

“I was practicing lockpicking techniques,” Sherlock defended.

“Sure you were, Freak,” Donovan said consolingly, patting him on the hand. “Here’s one for you: Never have I ever blown something up.”

John and Sherlock both drank.

So did Lestrade.

“It was completely harmless,” he said. “Just rubbish I found around the junk yard, alright? Look, I wasn’t always a cop; I actually was a teenager at one point. Got in my fair bit of trouble just like everyone else.”

Everyone stared at him.

“Were you in a gang?” Hopkins asked.

Lestrade rolled his eyes. “No. I was not in a gang.”

“This is the weirdest day of my life,” Anderson muttered.

“Thought that was when you met me,” Sherlock quipped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was getting a bit long, so the drinking game shall continue in the next chapter :)


	11. Disney Movies

“Never have I ever been attracted to someone at this table,” Hopkins said innocently, without touching his own drink. O’Malley shot him a death glare.

Everyone else drank, though Lestrade looked vaguely squeamish and self-hating while doing so.

“Playing this game was a bad idea,” he muttered. “This was before I got to know you lot and your glimmering personalities, okay? And now even if I wasn’t all o’ your bosses, you couldn’t pay me to have sex with any of you.”

“Congrats on not being a prostitute, Greg,” Sally said.

“Ta, thanks,” he said. “Never have I ever played in a band.”

He, John, and Sherlock drank. Lestrade’s eyebrows crept up. “Really? Never woulda guessed, Sherlock. What’d you play? I was bass guitar.”

“Chair one violin,” he sniffed.

“Oh, that type of band,” Lestrade said, disappointed.

John chuckled. “Damn. I was third clarinet in middle school, and that’s it.”

Anderson leaned back in his chair, looking smugly pleased with himself. “Never have I ever had a threesome.”

He and John both drank.

Donovan frowned. “I thought you said your wife was your first.”

“She was,” Anderson said. “But about five months ago, Julie said she had met someone at her gym, and she wanted to spice things up between us.” He shrugged.

Donovan’s face looked like it couldn’t decide which emotion to display. “But—what about—”

“Your wife is quite serious about this other person,” Sherlock said. “She won’t stop seeing them. Her? Her. And she isn’t the first, either.”

Anderson paled. “What? No. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve never even met Julie.”

“You’ve been cheating on your mate for the past three years. A blind dog could see it. I assure you, your wife knows, and decided to give you a taste of your own medicine long ago,” he said. “For instance, you’ve been bragging quite profusely to anyone who will listen about your wife’s pregnancy. The entire Yard has been talking about it for months. But you hadn’t been intimate with Julie for quite a long time, up until her sudden proposal of a threesome five months ago. If it truly was five months ago, then the timeline of your insufferability indicates that she told you she was pregnant only one or two weeks after that. While theoretically long enough for a missed period—assuming an extended ovulation period—a woman would not typically take a pregnancy test when only slightly late, after only having sex once. No, she already knew or suspected she was pregnant. The child isn’t yours. The threesome was a cover-up. What does this point to? A string of extramarital lovers, with this third partner being the standout among them. Quite a lovely marriage you’ve got there, Anderson, I wish you the best.”

Anderson’s face slowly turned redder and redder over the course of the speech, until it was nearly mottled purple with rage. He stood up abruptly, fists clenched, and stormed out of the bar.

“Shit,” Donovan said. “He gets—he gets aggressive when he’s sloshed. I better go after him.”

Lestrade frowned deeply. “Do you want me to come with you?”

“No, I’ll be fine. It’s Julie I’m worried about.” She gave a weak smile, and dashed out.

A somber silence fell over the table in their wake.

Lestrade pushed back his chair. “I’ve got—paperwork.”

“You’re going to drive around Anderson’s neighborhood for the rest of the night in your cop car. You don’t trust a beat cop to respond quickly or seriously enough, or to have the appropriately nuanced understanding of the situation,” Sherlock said.

His face darkened. “You know, Sherlock,” he said. “There are some deductions that are better off kept to yourself. I think you’ve done enough for tonight, don’t you?”

* * *

“Daddy!” Ivy called. “Look! Mrs. Hudson and I are making biscuits!”

Mrs. Hudson smiled warmly. “The little dearie and I are on our third batch. Try some, try some! We’ve got snickerdoodles over there, and chocolate chip by the fridge.”

“The ones in the oven are _double_ chocolate,” Ivy said. “They have chocolate dough with chocolate chips inside. I wanted to put chocolate frosting on too, after they cooled, but Mrs. Hudson said no.”

“That’s too much chocolate, Ivy dear.”

“There’s no such thing.”

Sherlock bit into a chocolate chip biscuit. “Hm. These are delicious. I highly encourage you to bake with Mrs. Hudson as often as you like, Ivy,” he said. “Did you do your homework?”

She sighed. “Yes.”

“Excellent,” he said. “Thank you for watching her, Mrs. Hudson. And picking her up. And doing her homework with her. And entertaining her.”

She waved him off. “Oh, it’s no trouble, dear. I never had little ones of my own, you know. My alpha was always saying we should wait. He wanted the cartel to get really successful first, you see. He was using the sponge trade as a front—not as uncommon as you’d think! Before all these modern synthetic things were invented, everyone had to have sponges, and you got them by scuba diving in the Florida Keys. Dangerous business, that, always a chance of getting the bends. But so profitable! In the old days, you would take a sponge, you would stuff drugs in it, you would sell the things at auction—”

“Again, thank you, Mrs. Hudson, I really cannot say it enough,” Sherlock interrupted. “But Ivy and I must be off now. It’s time for dinner, and all that.”

“Oh, but the biscuits aren’t done!”

“She can come back after supper,” John said. “Right, Sherlock?”

“Indeed.” He smiled.

* * *

“—And she said it was Ariel and I said ‘who’s Ariel?’ and she said ‘Ariel from the movies’ and I was like ‘what movies?’ and she said ‘the Disney movies’ and I said ‘I’ve never heard of those’ and then she made a face and called me a weirdo. And then Mrs. Aberdeen told us both to be quiet and do our science worksheet. But it was boring science, Dad. We didn’t even do a real experiment. We just read about one. And it was a baby experiment, too. Everyone already knows about the water cycle.”

Sherlock nodded sagely.

“Wait,” John said. “You’ve never seen the Disney movies?”

Ivy shook her head.

“Oh, we’re having a marathon.”

* * *

“Alright, so here are all the Disney movies,” John said. “Which one looks the most interesting?”

Ivy frowned. “Isn’t there a more systematic way to go through them?”

“Well—yeah?”

“If we just jump around at random, then we might miss some or it’ll be confusing,” she said. “We should go through them alphabetically.”

“You might end up with wild variations in style and theme that way,” Sherlock said. “I recommend a chronological viewing instead. You’ll be able to see the evolution of the animation process that way.”

Ivy nodded. She turned to face John. “Which one’s the oldest?”

“Snow White,” he said. “Oi, Sherlock, you aren’t getting out of this. You obviously need to be educated on the finer points of children’s animation yourself. Sit down on the couch with us.”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow, but John held his gaze steadily. The detective acquiesced and settled in.

He fell asleep on John’s shoulder sometime in the middle of Cinderella. Ivy herself was in John’s lap, and dropped off around the wedding scene. He was fully, completely trapped.

He managed to wriggle a hand out far enough to flick the TV off. He resigned himself to a night on the couch and an ache in his shoulder tomorrow.

It would be worth it.

* * *

“Sherlock,” John murmured into his hair. The detective made a soft sound and snuggled further into his shoulder. “Sherlock, wake up, l—” He caught himself just in the nick of time. He cleared his throat manfully, and shifted. “I need to go to work.”

Ivy yawned, stretched slightly, and curled up tighter around him. John’s hand drifted to her back seemingly of its own volition and he glanced nervously at his watch.

Crap. Crap crap crap crap.

He wasn’t going to be late, per se, but he absolutely had to get up right this second to make it on time. And Ivy had about ten or fifteen minutes before she should get up and get around for school, but John was loathe to infringe upon those fifteen extra minutes.

He shifted with real determination this time and shrugged Sherlock off of him, lifted Ivy up in his arms before laying her quickly back down against her father.

This, unfortunately, woke both of them up.

Ivy’s sharp green eyes and Sherlock’s glass-ice blue ones blinked up sleepily at him. John gave an apologetic half-smile.

“I have to get ready for work,” he said quietly. “I’ll be back ‘round 2:30, yeah? Don’t forget you have to go to the Yard and give your statement today, Sherlock.”

“You have to too,” he countered. “We may as well do it together. After you get home from work.”

He nodded. “Right. After I get home.” He leaned down and planted a kiss on the top of Ivy’s head, then immediately realized that was strange and out-of-bounds.

Ivy didn’t seem to mind, though, and returned the gesture with a hug around his waist. Sherlock was looking at him curiously.

“Right,” John said, and disappeared off to his room as fast as he could.

* * *

He spent the entire day at work distracted.

He had almost called Sherlock ‘love.’ What the fuck. What the actual fuck? Where had that come from? He had a girlfriend. A lovely, beta girlfriend who he actually liked and thought the relationship might go somewhere with. He had no business going around calling other blokes ‘love.’ Blokes he barely knew and who had made their astounding lack of interest perfectly obvious, at that.

And he had kissed Ivy, as if she was his daughter. He had no excuse for that instinct. It had come out of absolutely nowhere. It would be perfectly normal if she was a relative of some sort, but she most definitely was not. She was his new flatmate’s daughter (emphasis on the new), and John had not even achieved part-time babysitter status.

He suddenly remembered that they had not gone back down to Mrs. Hudson’s after dinner for the biscuits, and was struck with guilt.

God, last night had been weird. Actually, all of yesterday had been thoroughly, thoroughly weird. He should write the whole day off as an anomaly and put it permanently out of his mind. Better off forgotten about, really.

Except there was no bloody chance in hell of him actually doing that.

He remembered Sherlock’s intermittent commentary of the historical context of each fairytale and Ivy’s rapt wonder that she tried to hide, and the comforting weight and warmth of both of them against him, and he knew he wasn’t going to forget it. Wouldn’t even try, really.

And really, nothing he had done had been _that_ unusual, had it? He had just been acting on instinct. His body thought of another man pressed against him as indicating something intimate, even if his mind knew better, and the almost-‘love’ thing had just been an unfortunate but completely explainable slip of the tongue.

He barely knew Sherlock. He had only met the man… thirty-four days ago (Christ) and he’d spent three weeks of that away at his brother’s house, childsitting.

And as to the kissing Ivy, well. It was only natural to give kids affection, wasn’t it? They could certainly never have too much, and Ivy hadn’t minded, had reciprocated, even. That was fine. No need to get worked up over it. It could even continue to happen without it being a big deal.

That settled, John firmly put the issue out of his mind and continued treating patients. And then he brought Sarah coffee from the break room, chatted with her a bit, and asked her out on a date this Saturday, promising a distinct lack of both Sherlock and Chinese assassins.

She laughed and said yes.


	12. The Study of Fungus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woop woop two chapters in one day
> 
> All those magazines mentioned are 100% real and you can subscribe to them

Scotland Yard is dismally silent that afternoon, an air of dark tension hanging over Lestrade’s department. Everyone keeps shooting Donovan worried looks, and Anderson is nowhere to be found. Donovan herself is more quiet and self-contained than Sherlock has ever seen her, seemingly completely tuned out to her surroundings, though he knows she’s too good a copper for that.

Ivy tugs on Sherlock’s coat, and he leans down to be within reach. “Why is everyone sad?” she whispers.

“Not sad,” he corrects quietly. “Hungover.”

Ivy frowns.

“They drank too much alcohol the night previous and now things need to be very, very quiet. Don’t ask them about it. Alright?”

She nods, pretending she understands.

“Ah, right. There you two are,” Lestrade said, finally taking notice of them. He looks as if the pure essence of tiredness has seeped into his very bones. He does not, however, look hungover. None of them do. “I’ve got statement sheets prepared right here for ya. All you have to do is fill ‘em out.”

John nodded, grabbing both forms and handing one to Sherlock. They both sat down and began filling in blanks mechanically.

Ivy wandered around the department, stopping at various people’s desks. O’Malley was super cool, as always, and definitely her first stop. But today she was distracted and grown-uppy and boring, which Ivy assumed was another symptom of being hungover, so she moved on to Hopkins—the second-coolest subordinate in Uncle Greg’s department.

Hopkins had a bunch of toys on his desk that he insisted weren’t toys and he chattered on excitedly about Doctor Who if you gave him half a chance, so Ivy made sure she didn’t, and instead told him all about the complex social-political intrigue of her first-grade class. Hopkins nodded along eagerly. Then he told her about his own vaguely disturbing and sad primary school experiences.

Sherlock sighed and put his pen down. He glanced over at his daughter, thoroughly engaged in deep discussion with Hopkins, the other adopted child of the homicide department.

“Lestrade,” he said quietly. “Did anything… happen, last night?”

The older man shook his head. “Nothing that can be prosecuted, anyway. Phil had a row with his wife, Sally showed up, got involved, the whole thing devolved into a screaming match. A coupla neighbors called the cops, and I responded. Was able to calm things down.”

“And where is Anderson?” John asked.

“Took a sick day,” Lestrade said. “Might be taking a lot of sick days. For this week, anyway.”

“Is Sally alright?” Sherlock asked.

Lestrade spared a glance her way, then shook his head and returned to his paperwork. Sherlock nodded concisely, as if that explained everything, and set his statement on his desk. He stood, and John did the same.

“Come along, Ivy,” he called. “I believe we left biscuits at Mrs. Hudson’s.”

* * *

“So I looked up mycology,” John said conversationally. “It’s the study of fungus? Like molds and mushrooms?”

Ivy nodded, her entire presence seeming to light up. “It’s interesting. I’m going on a mushroom walk this Saturday with my dad.”

“Really? Where are you going?”

“Regent’s Park. London has a lot more mushrooms than most people think, you know.”

“So I’ve heard. What do you do with the mushrooms once you find them?”

“Well, most people cook with them or sell them to restaurants. But that’s so limiting. And those people never look for cool mushrooms, they’re just trying to find _expensive_ mushrooms. It’s not the same thing. You know, there’s such a thing as bleeding tooth fungus and it looks utterly repulsive. It’s amazing.”

“…What _do_ you do with the mushrooms?”

“Mostly spore prints,” she said. “Dad got me a special book for it for my birthday. I have catalogued thirty-three different species of mushrooms in it so far. And I have another book where I draw the mushrooms and take notes and measurements on them, for science.”

John arched an eyebrow. “You’re very serious about this.”

Ivy nodded. “Mycology is my detection,” she said. “One day, I wanna be the world’s most famous mycological doctor, and I wanna discover a species that no one else has ever seen or documented before.”

“What are you going to name it?”

“It doesn’t work like that, John. You have to name things after their objective characteristics.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes you do.”

“Nuh-uh. Plenty of things in science are named after the doctor who discovered them, or a mythological figure, or even a loved one of the discoverer. There’s power in being a scientist, you know. You can name your discoveries whatever you want and no one else is allowed to say a thing about it.”

Ivy paused. “Really?”

“Really.” John nodded.

She considered that. She readjusted Constable Mycena on her perch on the table. “I’m going to need another notebook.”

* * *

On Friday, The Rulers of the Elements had a conference on the playground at recess.

“Let us take roll,” Charlie said imperiously, standing one step above the rest on the play fort. “Queen Daniellisia of the Jungle, representing the element of Plants.”

“Here,” Danielle said.

Ivy had tried to argue, early on, that plants weren’t actually an element. She had been outvoted. She had then gone to her dad in confusion, asking if science was changeable like that.

“King Lucas of Arendale, representing the element of Ice.”

Her argument on that one had been token at best. She had, however, gotten out the globe at home and tried to look up Arendale. She had failed, no matter how hard she looked, and eventually involved her father in the search. John had been laughing at something in the newspaper the entire time.

He said it was the comics. Sherlock said it spoke ill of his intelligence that he found them that funny. John ignored him, and continued with his muffled laughter and smiles and discreetly watching them over the top of the paper.

“Here,” Lucas said.

“Queen Ivy of Hell, representing the element of Fire.”

“Here,” she said.

“And finally, last but not least,” Charlie said, tilting her chin up and looking as haughty as possible. “Grand Queen Charlotte-Marie of Fairytopia, representing the element of Air.”

“How come you get to be a grand queen?” Lucas asked.

“Because I’m the best,” Charlie said.

“No, you aren’t,” he said, putting his hands on his hips. “We’re _all_ the best.”

“That’s not how superlatives work,” Ivy said.

“What _ever,”_ Charlie said, rolling her eyes. “Fine. I’ll just be a regular queen. We’re all the best. Happy now?”

Lucas gave her one last glare.

“That’s still grammatically incorrect,” Ivy muttered. No one seemed to hear her.

“Come on, we have to defeat the Dark King! He’s trying to steal all the color from the world!”

And with that, the moment was forgotten, and they raced off in search of the Dark King.

* * *

“Dad, you were right!” Ivy called as soon as she got home. “Mrs. Aberdeen wants me to skip a grade!”

Sherlock was sitting at the kitchen table, wearing ridiculous goggles and rubber gloves. He was in the middle of an experiment that involved pouring various base chemicals on skin samples. He looked like a mad scientist. John was keeping a careful distance in the livingroom.

“Of course,” he said. “What has she pronounced your reading level to be? Fourth grade or fifth?”

“Sixth.” She tossed long curls over her shoulder, and John bit his lip, firmly restraining his laughter. He kept his eyes fixed on his book.

“She also said she doesn’t know what to do with me when it comes to math, and she thinks she can get the principal to make a special exception for me and have me moved to second grade right now. Like, before the end of the year. She wants you to come in on Monday and talk to her.”

Sherlock nodded. “Of course. I’ll be there,” he said. “We should discuss it amongst ourselves before going in, however. Do you _want_ to skip a grade?”

Ivy shrugged.

“The material will be more challenging. They might teach you things you haven’t learned yet, though that is doubtful. I’ve covered most everything of importance for a child of your age. You have a strong grasp of fungal taxonomy and the experimental process. You know how to tie your shoes, manipulate an idiot, and do basic arithmetic.”

“But school will be less boring,” she said slowly.

Sherlock nodded. He took a breath. “There are social aspects to consider as well,” he gritted out.

“Like what?”

“If you skip a grade, you will be the youngest and smallest child in your class. You will no longer be in the same class as Charlie and Danielle.”

She paused. “I’m not in the same class as Lucas,” she said. “I still see him every day and we play together at recess. Everyone from kindergarten to second grade has recess together.”

“When you are in third grade and your friends are in second grade, there will be a year where you do not have recess together. And again, when you start middle school and they are still in fifth grade. Manageable, of course, and temporary, but nonetheless, something to consider.”

Ivy paused. “Then I shall consider it.”

* * *

Saturday morning dawned, and the 221B household rolled out of bed at their leisure. John gave Ivy another lesson in cooking (pancakes this time), and they all ate a late breakfast.

Sherlock and Ivy were off by 10:00, heading out for their mushroom walk.

And John was alone.

It was like when the two of them stayed at Mycroft’s house, but worse, somehow. Now John was used to the casual chaos of living with Holmeses. The sound of scientific glassware clinking, pages flipping, violin at odd hours. Acid stains on the kitchen table and paint drops and smears on every piece of furniture in the livingroom. Long lectures on the most obscure and singular of subjects. A child giggling and gasping at Disney movies or when John showed her a magic trick.

Before, it hadn’t been so bad. Being alone had been what he was used to. Even for an extended period of time, days and then weeks on end. Now, though, now he was spoiled. Spoiled absolutely rotten by the constant companionship of the most interesting people he had ever met, who filled his life and pushed all of before away into irrelevance, and a few hours alone felt cruel.

He picked at a medical journal. Didn’t absorb any of it. Casually noted that the Holmeses were subscribed to some very weird magazines: _Bee Culture: The Magazine of American Beekeeping, FUNGI Magazine, White Fungus,_ and _Science._ He tried reading some of the articles, but as interesting as Sherlock and Ivy no doubt found them, to him, they were just mind-numbingly dull.

He turned on the telly, but apparently Sherlock was getting to him, because it all seemed like mindless drivel.

He didn’t recall falling asleep, but he must have done, because next thing he knew, he was being woken up.

“John!” Ivy shouted. She proudly hoisted a basket high in the air. “You won’t believe what I found!”

Both father and daughter were flushed from excitement and cold, skin seeming even paler against the rose. They quickly shucked off their coats, along with Ivy’s hat and gloves. Ivy grabbed her basket and pounced on the couch beside John, shoving it between them and opening it. She grabbed a very large and odd-looking mushroom and shoved it in his face. “Look!”

“I’m looking, I’m looking,” he said, smiling. “Erm. What am I looking at?”

“Lichen. _O_ _n. A. Mushroom!”_

“Oooh, double fungus,” John said, waggling his eyebrows.

“Lichen’s only a half-fungus, John.”

“What? How is something half a fungus?”

Sherlock gave him a look. “You did, at one point, attend a biology class, correct?”

“Yeah, and I’m pretty sure taxonomy doesn’t do anything by halves,” he said, just slightly snippy.

Ivy didn’t notice. “Which is why lichen is so taxonomically interesting! It’s a composite organism, John! It’s half-plant, half-fungi, but not fully either and it can’t exist separately! The debate over its classification has been going on for decades, John, centuries! No one can agree; the scientific community is in uproar!”

“Whoa,” he said. “I had no idea.”

“You _should,”_ she said. “You’re a doctor. What if you get a patient who’s been poisoned by aflatoxins? Do you even know what an aflatoxin is?”

“I do.” He nodded. “I do, I promise. Look, I’ll brush up on my fungal infections knowledge, and I’ll come to you to fill in any gaps, alright? You can tell me as much about fungus as you want. That sound good?”

She stared at him, considering, then nodded. She hopped off the couch and grabbed her basket. “I have to go make spore prints.”

She disappeared as quickly as she had come.

“You really should know more about lichenology,” Sherlock said. “It is distantly possible for it to be somewhat relevant to your field one day.”

“Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”

Sherlock tilted his head. “Are you being sarcastic?”

“God no. Wouldn’t want to do anything to incur Ivy’s wrath like that again.” He smiled. “Tea?”


	13. Ban

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey it's time for a Sudden Plot Event!!
> 
> all chemical names and medical jargon is completely made up at random. I have no clue what I'm talking about

John went on his normal, ordinary, average date with Sarah, simmering with untapped energy the whole time, which,  _of course,_ decided to manifest itself in the form of a hand tremor that had Sarah shooting him concerned looks and asking see-through questions. 

He paid the bill and decided a long, brisk walk back to 221B was in order. When he opened the door, the scent of burnt eggs, smoke, and ash assailed him. The smoke detector was disassembled and lying in parts on the kitchen counter. The furniture in the livingroom had all been pushed out of the way to make room for an 8x4 foot roll of paper spread out on the floor (newspapers under it, thankfully). Ivy was painting something indecipherable on it, large headphones clapped over her ears. She was humming along to whatever song she was listening to, occasionally mouthing the words. Sherlock, meanwhile, was at the kitchen table with an array of test tubes and beakers and strange tubing, all filled with clear liquid, but he was wearing safety goggles and thick rubber gloves and an intense look of concentration. It was the first time John had  _ever_ seen him use any form of PPE, so figured whatever was in those vials could level the whole flat, easily.

John had, frankly, seen battlefields that were tidier and more put-together than this.

He breathed out a long, heartfelt sigh of relief.

He picked his way through the chaos of the livingroom. Books and stacks of paper were shoved in every spare place. Someone had taped a pair of sunglasses to the human skull. Bills that Sherlock wouldn't pay had been stabbed to the mantle again. At some point during that banker case, Sherlock had apparently  _stolen_ some of the graffiti spray paint, and now there was a smiley face on the wall. A quarter-finished violin composition was taped onto one window, the light shining through the paper and lighting up the notes. From what John could tell, it looked frantic.

There was a plastic cup full to the brim with dirty paint water balanced precariously on the seat of his chair. He moved it carefully to the relocated coffee table, making sure to point out its new location to Ivy.

He sank down into his chair and closed his eyes, blissful.

Not ten minutes later, there was a small  _boom_ in the kitchen.

* * *

Sherlock was already up, of course, when John tumbled out of bed the next morning, warm and sleep-rumbled, heat and alpha pheromones wafting off of him. Sherlock lay prone on the couch, pulling slow, long notes from his violin, feigning disinterest.

He loved mornings. John's scent was always at its most natural then. From a purely biological standpoint, it is a known fact that the scent of a familiar and trusted alpha has a calming effect on omegas. There have been studies that have found both a reliably soothing psychological effect as well as a regulatory, stabilizing effect on hormonal output. It's nothing personal.

It's also so much better than when John comes home from a shift at the clinic and his own alpha smell is so much stronger with the sweat of the day on him but it's nearly drowned out by the stench of antiseptic and sickness and infection and the faint odor of every single patient he treated that day, a thousand different people's scents covering up his John's. It's strange, and it's unsettling.

But today's a Sunday, and John doesn't have to work and Ivy doesn't have to go to school, and Sherlock might not have any cases right now, but he does have a very fascinating experiment going on, and today's going to be perfect, just lovely.

John returns from the kitchen with two cups of tea, setting one on the floor beside Sherlock where he will undoubtedly forget about it (livingroom still out of order), and taking the other with him to his armchair, flicking on the telly as he settles in.

Sherlock makes a face and kicks it up a notch with his violin playing. They keep the subtitles permanently on anyway. Sherlock can never tell what's being bloody said half the time without them, stupid sensory processing problems.

Not that he cares about watching the mindless drivel of television anyway. It's Ivy who set it, rolling her eyes and saying he was the stereotypical old person who can't figure out basic technology. Sherlock had rolled his eyes right back and launched into a diatribe about how he's perfectly technologically competent, thanks, he just doesn't  _care_ about watching TV.  _John's_ the one who types one key at a time and isn't even aware of half the functions on his phone.

"--erlock? Sherlock, are you listening to this?"

"Hm?"

 _"Sherlock,"_ John said, terse, bitten off. "The telly. The news. Look what's on the news."

He set his violin down carefully and sat up.

"--a total recall of these drugs, as well as a full-scale ban on omega hormone-replacement therapy. We're going live now to one of the key legislators in charge of crafting and passing this bill, Sir Alfred Walsh-Lawrence. Sir?"

"Well, Miss Taylor, I can't take all the credit. The party as a whole has been fighting tooth and nail to push this bill through Parliament, and there's been quite a lot of opposition, though I can't imagine why. This new law is going to restore the natural order, as well as protect omegas. It's about putting their safety first."

"Can you explain?" the on-site reporter asked.

"These drugs-- these so-called suppressants-- have extreme negative effects on omega physiology. Over time, with prolonged use, they can cause sexual dysfunction, decreased libido, abnormal hormonal responses, some intestinal issues, even  _infertility._ Not to mention the everyday effects of just being on them. Subverting your natural hormonal function should only happen as a last-resort intervention in a medical crisis, if that. Nowadays, these omegas are going on drugs, dosing themselves up to the point where they've suppressed every last one of their natural instincts. I've seen omegas on suppressants. They're basically comatose, completely apathetic. They'll see their own children crying, begging and pleading for care, and they'll do nothing. Doesn't even faze them. Well, no more."

"Fascinating. And what can you tell us about--"

Sherlock snatched the remote out of John's hand and clicked the TV off. He stood up rapidly, pacing the length of the livingroom in a nervous tension.

"I--" John started. "Okay, I realize what I'm about to suggest is illegal, but you could probably still get them black market."

"It's a highly specialized regimen of hormone-suppression drugs. Not a generic, one-size-fits-all pill."

"Aren't you a chemist though?" he asked. "Could you make your own?"

Sherlock paused. Nodded. "Yes. Of course. I'll look into it," he said. "This doesn't need to change a thing."

* * *

He immediately headed off to the labs at Bart's. His own tabletop lab at home simply didn't have the materials or equipment necessary.

Molly met him at the door, falling in stride with him easily, her tension matching his perfectly. "You're here to manufacture suppressants, right?"

"Keep your voice down."

She swooshed to stand in front of him, folding her arms. "You're gonna make some for me too," she said.

His face contorted into a snarl. "Make your own. I don't have bloody time to be your personal supplier. It'll be a miracle to get my own mix calibrated in time, much less produced."

"Sherlock Holmes, you will make me suppressants or I swear to God, I will report you." Her voice rose as she spoke, and she was shaking slightly. Rage or fear?

Sherlock looked her over, her determined stance, the fire in her eyes, the attention and whispers they were attracting in the middle of this crowded hallway. He sighed.  _"Fine._ But you just signed yourself up for lab assistant duty for the entirety of this project; I hope you realize that."

She smirked, perking up immediately. "Fine by me, Sherlock. Come on, lab's this way."

* * *

"--and  _I'm_ telling  _you,_ that much alphandrohepnol would shut down your kidneys and impair heart function," Molly said for the third time.

Sherlock threw up his hands. "Any less and we'll barely feel the effects at all! We may as well not take the suppressants, at that rate!"

"There has to be something we can use as a substitute."

"There's plenty, you've just vetoed it all."

"Everything you suggested was addictive, fatal, illegal, or all three!"

"Yes, but it would  _work,"_ he said. "Listen, if you're uncomfortable with the idea of purchasing these materials, I can do it myself. I still have contacts--"

"God!" she shouted. "Not the point!"

Sherlock breathed out heavily and stalked off a good distance. "I need a cigarette."

"You had a cigarette ten minutes ago. We agreed; only one break per hour."

"The things you smoke shouldn't even count."

"Oh, shut up." She pulled her hair back and up into a high ponytail, tying it off with the band on her wrist. "Okay. So what if... What if we diluted the alphandrohepnol, and used more but at a lower concentration?"

"We'd still need to supplement it with something. The body needs to be completely convinced that a pregnancy would not be viable at the moment so that it will not release an ovum. What about septadetroxin? It'll bind with the rheflotunim and slow down our metabolism almost to the point of death."

Molly frowned. "That's not healthy."

"Who cares about healthy? It would work.  _And_ we wouldn't need to eat so much."

"Okay, let's put that down as a last resort. We'll look into septadetroxin after we've exhausted all the options that won't almost-kill us."

* * *

Three days later they had half a formula planned out that contained diluted alphandrohepnol, septadetroxin, and corolinum. With the way it was now, they were projecting total liver failure and combined uterine and fallopian atrophy within three years of use, possibly less. Molly had ten pills left. Sherlock had seven.

Sherlock popped that day's pill out of the packet, holding it carefully between his fingers. He tossed it back with a glug of cold tea.

He swallowed his pride and texted Mycroft.

_I will be at the Diogenes Club at 10. See to it that you are free. -SH_

_I am in Prague. -Holmes_

_Don't care. -SH_

_I will continue to be in Prague for the next three weeks. I will be back in London on November 21st. We can meet for lunch the 22nd, at 10 Downing Street. If it is an emergency, either call me like an adult or come to Prague. -Holmes_

Sherlock swore and tossed his phone at the wall.

 

 

 


	14. Patent Information

Ten minutes of scowling at nothing later, Sherlock picked up his phone.

He hated phone calls.  _Hated_ them. They were unnecessarily stress-inducing and difficult to navigate and talking to people was already hard enough, did he really have to attempt it without visual cues? It was... Why did anyone willingly make phone calls, anyway? They were the most obscure and complicated of human social rituals, in Sherlock's opinion.

This was stupid. It was literally just his brother. He didn't give a rat's arse what Mycroft thought of him. There was no need to be afraid of making a  _bloody_ phone call.

Fuck.

Sherlock took a deep breath and pressed the call button, already pacing as it rung out.

Mycroft picked up instantly.

"You are thirty-two, Sherlock, a phone call is a simple, everyday function of adulthood."

"Oh, fuck you, Mycroft."

"Hmm, perhaps I'll hang up. You can call me back when you're in a better mood."

"No!" he snapped. "No, just..." He sighed. "The suppressants ban."

"I warned you about this bill no less than three times before it passed."

"What? No you didn't."

"Yes, I did, Sherlock. I've been telling you for years to stop tuning me out when I discuss politics, and now look where it's got you."

"It's not my fault you have the most boring job in existence!"

"You wouldn't have called me simply to complain," Mycroft said. "You couldn't. You only call me when you have a particularly vexing problem and need a favor."

"Yes. I am attempting to invent my own heat suppressants for myself and Dr. Hooper, and I would like to have the information in whatever file or notes or what-have-you that Smith-Gould Technologies has on us."

"Ah. The experiment is going poorly, then."

"Mycroft." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Please. I'm calling in the half-favor you owe me. SGT did full examinations on us, got our biometrics, and then gave us each a particular pill based on whatever patient typography they stuffed us into. What'll work for Molly won't work for me, and vice versa. We don't have time to figure out--"

"Molly?" Mycroft interrupted. "Are you referring to Dr. Hooper? Sherlock."

He grit his teeth.

"Mummy will be so pleased when I tell her you've made a little friend."

"Shut up. Fuck you. Stop."

"And  _quite_ the friend, too, it seems. You're making her suppressants? At the risk that you will not have time to make your own suppressants?"

"It's absolutely  _nothing_ like what--"

"I do hope you aren't actually valuing her safety above that of your own. I've always held the caring is not an advantage, and this is exactly what I meant. This is clearly a well-established connection; I have no idea how you've managed to hide her from me this long. Well no more. I will be telling our parents immediately, and you will then be expected to bring this 'Molly' home for Christmas, and--"

"Oh my God!" he shouted into the phone. "We're just friends! Barely! Actually, we're  _not_ friends. In fact, I  _hate_ Molly and I'm making her suppressants because she is  _blackmailing_ me. Is that someone you want to welcome into our parents' home, Mycroft? Hmm? A  _blackmailer?!"_

Resounding silence on the other end of the line.

Sherlock's grip on his phone was like a vice.

"If you're quite finished," Mycroft said. "I will definitely be telling our parents about your new friend because last time you had a friend, it was in uni, and he got you pregnant."

 _"Molly's an omega!_ I swear to God, Mycroft, I will strangle you with your own bloody tie!"

"As to that half-favor you asked for, I'm afraid I'm quite busy at the moment. I can put one of my lower agents on it, but not for a week at least. I'm sorry."

"It'll be too late by then! I only have six pills left, Mycroft, and that's not counting the time I'll need to begin manufacturing them!"

"There is literally nothing that you or I can do about it. Frankly, Sherlock, you should have started this project weeks, if not months, ago, when I first told you about it. You're in this situation due to your own responsibility, and sometimes, as an adult, you simply have to live with the consequences."

"The consequences--!"

"Heat isn't even that bad."

"And what the hell do you know about it?! Screw you, Mycroft! Favor redacted, I'll figure it out on my own!"

He slammed his thumb down on the 'end call' button and it wasn't satisfying  _at all._

* * *

As it turns out, thinking clearly and not flying into a blind panic at the sight of dwindling pills first thing in the morning works wonders for the creative process.

"All patents are public information," Sherlock explained, and Molly nodded, listening intently. "Smith-Gould Technologies has patents on eight different types of omega heat suppressants, based on these categories: female-minor, female-adult-underweight, female-adult-healthy weight, fe--"

"I get it," Molly said. "How do the patents help us?"

"The basic premise of a patent is that it is illegal for anyone else to manufacture that product instead of buying straight from the company who owns it. In order for that to be enforceable, the product must be described in extremely exact terms. When it comes to medicine, that includes not only the ingredient list, but also how to make it, step by step."

"No more guesswork?" she asked, near-breathless.

"No more guesswork." He grinned. He stabbed a button on the laptop open in front of him. "And here... are the patents."

They stared.

They read.

Their spirits fell.

"Of the first ten ingredients, I think the only ones we can get a hold of are water and the binding agent," Molly said softly.

"Nonsense," Sherlock said. "We could easily get distilled beta pheromones. I could pay homeless people ten quid a pop to come in and give a sample."

"...Okay. That still leaves 24 other ingredients. Almost all of them are extremely potent and have to be chemically engineered. There's... There's three controlled substances on that list. Where are we going to get ceftabazine? That'd take... months. Thousands and thousands of pounds."

"I have connections. I have money."

"You'd run out, at that rate. And Sherlock... Sherlock look at the procedure. We have one tiny lab, in a hospital, during the off hours. We can't... They had whole factories, Sherlock. Teams of scientists, working constantly."

"For mass production! We don't need--"

"We can't make this!" she shouted. "Look at it, Sherlock, it's hopeless! It's--" She shook her head. "Look. Thank you so much for trying. But it's time to give up now."

She picked up her coat and walked out of the room. Sherlock stayed where he was, fists gripping the table edge.

* * *

"How's the project going?" John asked lightly. "You were in the labs all day; I imagine you've got it all nearly perfect by now."

"We can't make the suppressants."

John put his newspaper down. "What?"

"It's futile; a lost cause. It simply can't be done," he said. "And I wasn't in the labs; I left Bart's at half three. I hit up every dealer this side of London, and none of them have any suppressants. No one in the country is making any, so the only hope is smuggling them in past customs, which is tricky work at best. Plus, the demand isn't high enough. There will  _always_ be a bigger payout for smuggling hard drugs, which makes heat suppressors a fundamentally bad investment. It is, unfortunately,  _entirely_ about the money when it comes to smuggling."

"Surely there's..." John trailed off. "I mean. Aren't there any omega smugglers out there? I'm not saying they're doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, but surely they realize how important it is. I mean, there  _is_ a demand."

"Yes," Sherlock murmured. "Yes, you're quite right. There will be a few suppressant smugglers that pop up. However, their prices will be unsustainably outrageous, and supply will be dodgy and irregular, which is really worse than no suppressants at all. No. There's nothing to be done for it. I'll just have to suffer heats now."

 _And increased hormones,_ John thought. Stronger instincts. Stronger senses. Increased libido, appetite, and response to alpha pheromones.

But suppressants also increased your need for sleep, so Sherlock would probably use going off them as an excuse to work himself even further to the bone, John thought grimly.

This just got better and better.

"Do you want me to move out?" he asked.

 _"What?!"_ Sherlock squawked.

"Sherlock. You're going to start going into heat regularly now. I can't be around for that. So. Do you want me to move out?"

Sherlock flopped down on the couch dramatically, throwing an arm up over his eyes. "God."

John waited.

"I won't be spending my heats here," he said finally. "I'll go to one of the family properties and lock myself away where there's no one. I can't have heats and attempt to take care of Ivy at the same time, anyway, this is an inevitable solution to the problem, regardless of your presence. No. I don't want you to move away. This is a perfectly suitable living arrangement, and I'll not have it ruined by stupid biology."

"Great," John nodded, trying valiantly to keep the smile off his face. "Great, that's... great, then."


End file.
